The Theory of Everything
by Akino Ame
Summary: A mistake in battle leads Devlin far from home, where his only hope of success is to challenge every truth he's taken for granted and learn to trust those he hates, and most of all, himself. Spoilers for UA through "Hero Time."
1. Sins of the Mother

"_Your father was a good man. But that was another world."  
Star Trek__ 2009 film trailer_

The Theory of Everything  
Prologue: "Sins of the Mother"

It was a modest house in Bellwood, Ben's original hometown. That made it all the stranger as Devlin sat at the table across from the pale, thin woman. He was confused as to why he was here, but he couldn't help but look on her with sympathy. Grey hair framed a bony face, worn from grief and regret. Her clothes almost seemed to hang off her, and a gold locket around her neck looked far too heavy for her.

He saw it then, but when he looked back on it later, he'd wonder why it took so long to put the pieces together.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "You look just like him."

Devlin was sorry too, but he didn't say that out loud. Instead, he just answered, "I know."

"Kevin wasn't always so bad," she remembered. "There was a time when he was happy. He was an angel. And then Devin died, and he took it so hard…"

He didn't want to hear this. Only a year ago had he built up the courage to confront his father in the Null Void, and though he was coping a lot better now, he still didn't have the strength to listen to his grandmother talk about him this way.

He guessed it was some kind of relief that Kevin's stepfather wasn't there. He wasn't sure he was ready for that meeting, if he could barely sit through this one.

"Why did you call me now?" he interrupted. "It's been eight years since I came to Earth."

She smiled sadly. "I suppose I just wanted to make amends. If I hadn't failed your father, then none of this would have happened to you."

Devlin felt a knot in his chest as he said, "It's not your fault. He made his choice. And I've been doing great since then. The Tennysons made sure to help me."

She was still smiling, though now, there were tears streaming down her face. "They shouldn't have had to. They've done so much for you that I should have done for my son."

"The past is over," Devlin insisted. "There's nothing we can do to change it. I'm happy now, and that's what counts."

"Yes, it is," she admitted. "I just wish I could help you. If Ben needs any help paying your tuition…"

"No, I've got a scholarship," he said. "Won it this year. I'm doing fine, I promise."

She nodded. "I'm proud of you. Devin would have been too." She clutched the locket around her neck.

Devlin got up. "I'd better go. I've got class tomorrow."

"I'm sorry I kept you," she replied, putting a hand on his. "Take care of yourself, Devlin."

"I will," he promised. "Goodbye."

She almost tried to hold onto him, but she finally let him go so he could leave. Devlin knew he should have tried to be a little more sensitive, but the whole situation was so awkward that he wanted out as fast as possible.

It was two years later when he got another call related to her. He'd just gotten out of the shower when his vidphone flew into his room, alerting, "Incoming call. Ben Tennyson."

"Patch me through," Devlin answered, pulling on a shirt.

The screen activated, revealing his adopted father. Ben Tennyson was in his fifties now, his hair greyer, but he was just as strong as ever. And he looked worried, which immediately but Devlin on alert.

"Hey, Devlin," he said.

"What's wrong?" Devlin asked immediately. "Did anything happen?"

"No, we're all okay," Ben quickly reassured him. "Sorry for scaring you. But a package just showed up for you in our mailbox."

"Is it safe?" Devlin checked, wondering why Ben hadn't just forwarded it to him.

"Yeah, but…" Ben hesitated for a moment before saying, "It looks like it's from your grandmother."

Devlin suddenly felt the same sense of urgency he knew his father had. He headed to the kitchen, the vidphone following him, and stood in front of the mailbox—a small teleporter pad built into the counter. "Send it over."

Ben nodded, and within seconds, a small cardboard box materialized on the transporter. Devlin ripped into the box, pulling out a gold locket and a letter. Recognizing the locket, he went to the letter.

"What is it?" Ben asked.

"'Dear Mr. Tennyson,'" he read. "'We regret to inform you that your grandmother, Elizabeth Levin-Hackett, has passed away. While she has named you in her will, she requested that you be sent this locket upon her passing. Our firm will be looking into the rest of her assets, and we will contact you as soon as we have everything in order.'" He looked back at the phone. "It's from her lawyers. That's why she wanted to meet me two years ago. She knew she was dying."

"I'm sorry," Ben apologized. "I didn't mean to open up any old wounds."

"No, it's okay," Devlin answered. "You couldn't have known."

"Are you going to be okay?" Ben asked.

Devlin sighed. Ben was getting more and more worried about him since he'd faced Kevin. He appreciated the sentiment, but right now, he didn't need his father trying to protect him.

"I'll be fine," he insisted. "I just need a little time."

"No problem," Ben answered. "Call back later, okay?"

"Yeah," Devlin promised. "Bye."

He switched off the phone and set down the letter. Steeling himself, he pried open the locket to see what was inside.

It was empty.

Somehow, that unnerved him more than if there had been something inside.

_**Ben 10 **_**is the property of Cartoon Network. The title "The Theory of Everything" comes from an episode of **_**CSI: Crime Scene Investigation**_**. This fic is part of the same universe as "Leap of Faith" and "Reckoning," but it's written so you don't have to read them to understand this one. It helps, but it's not completely necessary.**

**The name "Elizabeth Levin" is my own for Kevin's unnamed mother, as seen in the **_**Alien Force**_** episode "Vendetta." If she is given a name in canon, I will come back and change it. I have this general rule for everything in the "Ken 10" universe: if it happened prior to **_**Ben 10 **_**classic, it happened in their history too. This rule will come into play as the story progresses.**

**Update 12/18/10: Included Mrs. Levin's new last name and threw in a reference to Harvey Hackett, in the wake of "Absolute Power."**


	2. Relativity

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter One: "Relativity"

Devlin held the locket in one hand and a scarred identification bracelet in his other. Both were ties to his past, but they felt like they came from another world entirely. The bracelet was made of some tough silver metal, sized to fit around the wrist of a skinny eleven-year-old boy. It had been used to ID him when he first arrived at a group home on the Saturn colony, when he'd been left without a mother and with a father in the Null Void. The name had once read "Devlin Levin," but he'd scratched out the last name years ago, in a fit of fury about who he'd come from. The locket, on the other hand, didn't have any identifying features on it, but it was a tie to his Levin side all the same.

He heard the door swish open, and he hurriedly tucked the locket under his clothes and stuffed the bracelet into his pocket. It had been years since he'd more or less come to terms with everything; he didn't need his family thinking otherwise.

"Don't tell me you're going to hide here the entire party," groaned his brother, Ken. "The Null Void Chamber? Seriously, Dev?"

"Given a choice between this and Great-Grandpa's cooking?" Devlin challenged, raising an eyebrow.

"You'd be surprised what you can tolerate when you're drunk," Ken answered, albeit a little sheepishly. "But don't let Dad hear that." Devlin chuckled and shook his head. "So really, what are you doing here?"

Devlin sighed and looked over at the Null Void Chamber. Beyond its safeguards was the pocket dimension where the universe's greatest criminals were locked away. Including his biological father.

"No idea, really," he admitted.

Ken gave him a worried look. "You're not going to face him again, are you?"

Devlin shook his head. "No, I think I made my point last time. Not that I think it made much of a difference to him, but I got it out of my system. I guess I'm still a little conflicted."

"What's to be conflicted about?" Ken asked. "He manipulated you. He would have _killed_ you."

"I know," Devlin answered. "But at the same time, he was my dad."

Ken snorted. "Not anymore he's not. Trust me, _our_ dad has earned a lot more right to that than _he_ ever did."

"And I wouldn't even have you guys if he hadn't decided I didn't mean anything to him," Devlin said. Wryly, he added, "I don't know whether I should keep on hating him or start thanking him, at this rate."

"You know what I think," Ken added. That got a smirk out of Devlin. "So, come on. What really brought this on? It can't be the party."

Devlin reached under his shirt and pulled out the locket, holding it up for Ken to see. Ken raised an eyebrow and said, "Not really your style."

Devlin snorted as he stuffed it under his clothes again. "Thanks. Belonged to my grandmother—Kevin's mom."

"Is this what her lawyer sent when she…" Ken started, and Devlin nodded. "Wow. So…"

"There's nothing inside," Devlin replied. "I checked. Just some kind of family heirloom."

"Weird," Ken answered, and Devlin shrugged. "Anyway, we'd better get back to the party before everyone wonders where we are."

It had been ten years since the day Devlin's adoption was formalized, months after the battle that had brought them all together. Naturally, the family was throwing a party for the occasion, with various relatives embarrassing themselves on the dance floor. Just about anyone who could call themselves a Tennyson at any point in their life was there, including Ben's ex-wife, Kai, Ken's mom. Ken chatted with her for a bit while their grandparents, Sandra and Carl, fawned over Devlin and how much he'd grown in the decade since he'd joined the family. Desperate for a change in topic, Devlin looked around and noticed that in true Tennyson fashion, someone was missing from the party.

"Hey, is Ben here?" he asked, interrupting his grandmother. "I didn't see him when I got here, and…"

"Think I was late again?" Ben asked, walking in at just the right moment. Grinning at the sudden look of surprise on Devlin's face and the half-annoyed expression on Ken's, he said, "Nope, I'm actually on time. It's your aunt who's late. I was just calling her to brag."

"More like be a complete pain, as always," Gwendolyn cut in, stepping through a magic portal. Like her more famous cousin, the sorceress had also aged over the years—creases near her eyes and a couple of streaks of grey in her long red braid—but time had not defeated her; her magic was just as powerful as ever and had always intimidated Devlin to some extent.

Giving Ben one of her patented _looks_, Gwendolyn turned her attention to her nephews and gave them an apologetic smile. "Sorry I'm so late, guys. Been working a pretty tough case. Anyway, congratulations, Devlin."

"What's to congratulate _me_ for?" Devlin asked. "You're the ones who took me in. I should be thanking all of you."

"Yeah, but you managed to survive us for ten years," Ben answered, earning yet another glare from his cousin.

Gwendolyn sighed. "Ben, can I talk to you for a minute?"

As she grabbed him by the arm, Ken and Devlin snickered, barely trying to hide their amusement. Once they'd safely disappeared into the kitchen, Devlin said, "You'd think they'd have grown up by now."

"Yeah," Ken answered, but he sounded a little distracted.

Devlin snuck a glance around. Everyone else had gone back to the festivities, so he asked in a low voice, "What's up?"

"You're going to start mocking me," Ken said, "but do you ever get the feeling that Dad and Aunt Gwendolyn aren't telling us something?"

Devlin snorted. "That's a no-brainer."

Ken shot his brother a look of mixed confusion and offense. "Wait, you do? And all this time, you've rolled your eyes when I say Dad doesn't trust us?"

"Well, you _do_ whine about it a lot," Devlin answered. Ken raised an eyebrow. "I'm serious. And hear me out: Ben's in charge of protecting this whole planet. Something goes wrong, he's on it. Aunt Gwendolyn's got it worse sometimes—she's got every magical crisis in this galaxy, simply because she's that powerful. Of _course_ there's stuff they're not telling us."

"And this doesn't bother you?" Ken asked.

Devlin remembered finding a hidden microphone on him when he'd confronted Kevin—how angry he was to learn about it, only to realize after he'd spent a good time yelling that Ben had only been trying to keep an eye on him to make sure that Kevin wouldn't attack, like he inevitably had.

"Not the way it does you," he answered. "Not anymore."

* * *

After he'd been dragged into the kitchen, Ben dug his heels into the floor and crossed his arms. "All right, what did you need to talk about?"

Gwendolyn raised her arms to either side, and her hands glowed blue. A shimmering curtain of blue light surrounded the kitchen on all sides, protecting them from any interruptions or eavesdroppers.

Ben raised an eyebrow. "You don't usually throw up wards. This must be important."

Gwendolyn sighed as she lowered her arms. "I didn't want to say this with everyone out there, but yeah, it's bad. It's Charmcaster again."

Much to her disappointment, Ben looked less than worried. "Charmcaster? Really, Gwen? How many times have you beaten her?"

"I'm serious," she said firmly. "We found _bodies._" Now, Ben's expression went serious. "It was obvious that whatever they went through, it was painful."

"Do you know what caused it?" Ben asked.

Gwendolyn scoffed. "You know if I did, I'd be out there trying to stop it right now."

"Gwen," Ben insisted, giving her a patient stare.

She sighed. "All right."

Raising her hand, she brought up images of the crime scenes—four victims, different species, different genders, but all of them had in common a look of pained horror frozen on their faces. Ben studied each one carefully with the ease of decades dealing with alien crimes of all degrees.

"Charmcaster's always preferred using books for her high-level spells, so she would have needed time to cast this," Gwendolyn explained. "And there weren't any runes or arrays at any of the scenes."

"It could have been a ward," Ben suggested. "Make sure nobody can escape while she casts the spell."

"We considered that," Gwendolyn answered. "But more likely, it was an array as a magical construct—wouldn't leave a physical trace, and the magical trace would be caught up in the rest of the spellwork."

Ben turned back to her with an eyebrow raised. "That'd take up a lot of power, I'd think. At least enough needed for this kind of spell."

"I know," Gwendolyn said. "Which is why we're really worried. Charmcaster and I are academic mages—we work with books and artifacts to channel the power already within us. To pull off something on this level, I'd need these." She gestured to the Charms of Bezel positioned on her sleeves. "And even _they_ don't have the power to do something like this."

"Which is?" Ben asked.

Gwendolyn sighed and shook her head. "It's like the lifeforce was completely drained from them. We've done autopsies—both magical and physical. There aren't any wounds. But there's also no lingering trace of lifeforce in them at all. Usually, when someone's killed like that, we can pick up on it—leftovers from cellular processes and things like that. But there's nothing there."

"That definitely sounds like it'd be high-level," Ben agreed, and Gwendolyn nodded. "So how would Charmcaster be able to do all of that while throwing more of her needed magic into an array? And why _drain _innocent people like that? They're non-magical, right?"

There was a humorless smile on Gwendolyn's face. "I knew you'd catch on eventually. No, none of them had magic. But they were all extremely fit—it would provide a lot of lifeforce. Our best guess is that Charmcaster's somehow tapped into ambient magic, probably through some kind of spell."

Ben looked at her, helplessly confused. "You've never mentioned ambient magic before."

"That's because it's pretty rare in comparison," Gwendolyn explained. "The ones who usually have it were born with it—it's a part of their species' makeup. Ambient mages draw their power from the world around them—that's how they build up their stores of power."

He nodded. "She's draining the lifeforce from people to build up her stores. And that's how she's able to hold an array there—she's more than replacing what she's used."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Gwendolyn admitted. "I told the others in Investigations, but you know them."

"Right," Ben answered. "No speculation—they don't like theories without evidence to back them up."

"And I don't exactly have anything in the way of hard evidence," Gwendolyn agreed. "Just four bodies, and my suspicions."

"That's enough for me," Ben insisted. "What kind of spell do you think she used?"

"The Archamada is the only spellbook I can think of that would be comprehensive enough to include ambient magic," she replied. "The only one that still exists, at least."

"Then we're in serious trouble," he summed up blithely.

"Yeah," she answered, just as casually. "But seriously? Promise me that if you find Charmcaster, you won't face her without me or anyone else from the Magical Division."

"Of course," Ben said, again sounding too casual. Gwendolyn gave him another one of her looks. "C'mon, Gwendolyn. You should know me better than that. I'm not the kid who rushes into things without thinking anymore."

Before she could retort, there was a ripple of energy against the ward. She lowered it, and Ken poked his head in through the kitchen door.

"Dad, Aunt Gwendolyn? We're running low on hors d'oeuvres out here."

Ben grabbed a bag of chips and tossed them to Ken. "Put these out first. I'll grab more food before Great-Grandpa decides he has to cook."

Ken grinned. "No problem. By the way, what were you guys talking about in here? You had the wards up for a while."

"Nothing you need to worry about right now," Ben answered easily.

Gwendolyn started to head out of the kitchen. "I'll let them all know you're running to the store."

"Thanks," Ben said, quickly transforming to XLR-8. "I'll be back soon."

While he sped off too quickly to hear it, Gwendolyn didn't miss the exchange between his sons:

"I told you."

"Let it go, Ken."

She really hoped Ben knew what he was doing, both regarding Charmcaster and regarding his kids.

* * *

Much later that night, after everyone else had gone home, Ken and Devlin found themselves with trash bags in hand, leaning over and under the tables.

"Answer me this: how'd we end up on recycler duty for our own party?" Ken asked.

"Because Great-Grandpa's too old to do this anymore, Ben had to take care of a situation, and Aunt Gwendolyn went home to get some sleep," Devlin answered.

"Oh, right," Ken deadpanned. "And you were stupid enough to say you'd stick around for a little bit. Somehow, that means _I _get drafted too."

Devlin snickered. "You're welcome."

Ken deposited a full bag in the recycler, a receptacle that teleported the garbage to a facility for sorting, recycling, and other disposal. As he reached for another bag, he said, "So how much do you want to bet that Dad's situation is related to that closed-doors meeting with Aunt Gwendolyn?"

Devlin rolled his eyes. "I didn't know it was time for one of these already."

Ken shot him a confused look. "One of what?"

"Your 'Dad doesn't trust me!' rants," he answered, making his voice mockingly high-pitched and whiny.

Ken grimaced. "I don't sound like that."

"Yes, you do," Devlin answered simply.

"Yeah, well…" Ken replied, reaching for something to fight back with. Devlin grinned as he failed.

"Genius hacker, high IQ, and you _still_ can't come up with a good comeback?"

Ken picked up a half-eaten slice of cake. "I've got your comeback right here…"

But before he could throw it, a shrill beeping alarm sounded throughout the complex. Immediately, they dropped everything and raced to the computer, bringing up holographic monitors.

"Ben?" Devlin asked, seeing a red blip blinking on the screen.

Ken moved one screen and tried to bring up another, meanwhile typing with his other hand. After a frantic moment, he said, "I can't get his comm. It must have been destroyed."

Devlin pointed at the screen with the blinking red light. "We've got his location, at least."

"Yeah," Ken agreed. "Let's head out there."

Devlin hesitated. "You sure? It looks like he's in trouble."

"Which is why he needs us," Ken argued. "We're faster than anyone else is. By the time it takes for the Enforcers to get there or Aunt Gwendolyn…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Devlin answered. "All right."

Ken smirked, reaching for the Omnitrix. "I'll race…"

But before he could finish, his brother dashed out the door, inhuman speed courtesy of his alien heritage. Ken snickered as he selected XLR-8 on the watch.

"Cheater."

**Reference to Ben and Kai being divorced is based on the fact that she's not even in "Ken 10," despite apparently being Ken's mom. I know that there's supplemental trivia saying what happened to her (and that Ken has a sister), but since it's information not actually shown in the episode itself, I treat it as optional canon. The concepts of academic and ambient magic are directly taken from Tamora Pierce's **_**Circle of Magic **_**books, with some adjustment here and there to fit with the magic we see in the **_**Ben 10 **_**universe. Thanks go out to Shaun Garin for helping me figure out how to make this chapter flow.**


	3. Into That Good Night

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Two: "Into That Good Night"

People screamed in terror as Diamondhead went flying through the crystal barrier he'd set up to close off the battle. He held back a curse as he pulled himself up. Forty years he'd been doing this, and he'd never understood why people stuck around and put themselves in danger in the middle of an attack.

"Get out of here!" he ordered.

A blast of energy came toward him and the civilians, and he quickly formed a shield to block it. Chunks of crystal fell to the ground from the attack, but it bought enough time for the people to escape. Hopefully, they would be sensible and evacuate.

Laughing, Charmcaster landed from where she'd been floating, striking the butt of her staff down on the comm link that had been knocked out of Ben's ear early in the fight.

"I'm disappointed," she taunted, pouting mockingly. "I thought you'd at _least_ try to put up some kind of fight. You're much less fun to play with than Gwen is."

She leveled her staff at him and fired off another energy blast. Quickly changing to Spitter, Ben leapt backwards and flipped, avoiding the blast and spitting slime at her. A quick wave of the staff generated a shield to protect her, and Ben switched to Heatblast, bringing his hands together to launch a blast of fire at her. To his disappointment, however, she emerged from the flames unscathed.

"Better," she answered, sounding bored. "But not your best. You're getting old. You're past your prime, and I'm at my peak."

She held out the staff at him again, but a set of restraints hit her from behind, binding her arms to her sides and forcing her to drop the staff. Electricity encircled her, making her cry out in pain.

"Looks like we got here just in time," announced Buzzshock as he landed to the ground in front of Heatblast.

Devlin ran over, one hand at his belt, which held several projectiles and Null Void containment capsules, the other hand in a guard position while gripping a crystal tonfa.

"You okay?" he asked.

"How sweet, you brought the kids!" Charmcaster teased. "I hope they'll put up more of a fight, being full of youthful energy and all."

Even through the heat of his own flames, Ben felt a chill run through him. "Ken, Devlin, get out of here _now_!"

"We can do this," Ken insisted, his tone short as he transformed into Stinkfly. Getting high in the air above Charmcaster, he called out, "Dev, back me up!"

Devlin tossed a fire-bomb into the air as Stinkfly spat out a stream of liquid. The bomb ignited the liquid, and a stream of fire poured down on Charmcaster. But before either of them could celebrate the victory, there was a flash of green as Ben transformed into his Benmummy form. Bandages snared around both of the brothers, yanking them closer to their father.

"Dad, we've _got_ this," Ken argued.

"No, you don't," Ben insisted.

"We know what we're doing," Ken said. "God, you never trust us!"

"You've only got twenty aliens unlocked!"

"And whose fault is that, huh? Who limited me to ten in the first place, and never lets me fight?"

Movement within the inferno caught Devlin's attention, and he looked over to see a form making its way out of the fire. Charmcaster had managed to free herself from the restraints and was walking toward them. Immediately, Devlin threw more grenades her way, but she held out her hands with a cry of "Tempestas!" and summoned a stream of water to protect herself. Moving her hand allowed her to send the stream toward the Tennysons, throwing them several feet. While Ken and Devlin were fine, Ben hit his head against the barrier he'd made to protect the civilians and lost consciousness, involuntarily returning to human form.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to keep a lady waiting?" Charmcaster asked.

Ken changed into one of his newer aliens, Arcticguana, and blasted ice at her. Smirking, she held out her hand and shouted, "Metacorpius!"

Ken was lifted into the air, and though he struggled and tried to change forms, he couldn't escape, and he reverted to human form. Devlin rushed Charmcaster, guarding himself with both of his tonfa, but she stopped him when he was only a foot away and sent him flying into the wreckage of the crystal barrier. While he managed to remain conscious, it was a struggle, and he was certainly out of the fight.

"Devlin!" Ken shouted, but a jolt of pain silenced him. Charmcaster had recovered her staff, and she'd used it to send electricity toward him.

"You should be more worried about yourself," she insisted, pointing the head of her staff toward the ground.

A circle of pink energy formed on the ground beneath Ken, crisscrossed by various lines and geometric patterns. As the array formed, Charmcaster summoned a book in front of her, which glowed briefly as pages flipped until she reached just the spell she needed. Ken recognized the book from files he'd hacked on the computer: the Archamada Book of Spells. Whatever this spell was, it was high-level, and he had to get out.

"Aww, now, don't do that," Charmcaster taunted as he renewed his struggles. "You'll waste precious energy that way. And I want it _all._ Ars…"

As she started chanting, someone ran over, leapt into the air, and shoved Ken out of the way. Freed from the spell, Ken hit the ground, rolling several times until he'd lost his momentum and came to a stop several feet away, unconscious. Left in his place in the center of the array was his father, immobilized and glaring at Charmcaster.

"Looks like you still had some fight left in you after all," Charmcaster judged. "I suppose it will be enough. Ars longa, vita brevis."

A glowing aura of white energy formed around Ben's body, pulsating in time with his heartbeat. Suddenly, pain gripped him, and threads of energy flowed from him to Charmcaster's staff.

"Ex nihilo nihil fit."

Ben bit back a cry of pain as more of his energy was drained. It felt like a heart attack, only going through every single one of his organs. Losing energy, his body was fighting desperately to stay alive, and it was a fight he knew he'd lose.

A twisted smirk formed on Charmcaster's lips as she recited, "Beati possidentes."

Ben tried to glare back at her, but he didn't have the strength left in him. His vision wavered until his eyes finally shut against the burning glow of her staff.

But it was the same bright light from the staff that managed to wake Devlin completely. The more it shone, the harder it was to shut it out. He got to his feet, shaking his head to fight off the fuzzy feeling of half-consciousness. But his head cleared the moment he saw Ben caught in the array with Charmcaster torturing him. Without hesitation, he transformed one of his arms and held it out toward her.

"Memento mori," Charmcaster read as Ben lost consciousness. She'd just about drained him entirely. Only a little more energy to go…

A blast of fire hit her from behind, and she half-turned to see Devlin standing where she'd thrown him, one of his arms in alien mode, blazing. His eyes drifted from her to the book, and he hurled another blast of fire at it.

"No, you idiot!" she shrieked.

But before she could stop it, the fireball hit the Archamada, setting the page on fire. The glow of her staff faded, and it collapsed to the ground, unable to hold itself up without the spell. And without her focus, the array vanished, causing Ben's body to drop to the ground. Even without checking, she knew he was still alive. The process hadn't finished—there was still energy she could drain out of him!

Devlin blasted more fire toward her, and Charmcaster knew she had to make a choice fast. While she hated having to leave the book behind, the staff was more important right now. She made a quick grab for it, then swung it out, releasing a blast of energy that Devlin had to block with his alien arm. He braced himself for the attack, managing to stand his ground, but it served its purpose. Charmcaster made a swipe with the staff, creating a fold in space, and promptly escaped, sealing it behind her.

Ken groaned as he started to stir, muttering, "Damnit, Dad," as he lifted his head. As he pushed himself up, he called out, "Devlin?"

When he didn't hear an answer, he turned to look for his brother, only to see him standing, frozen in shock, partially transformed. Immediately, Ken knew there was something wrong—Devlin had sworn years ago not to transform. If he didn't focus or if he got too emotional, he often got stuck in the transformation, and it took nothing short of the Omnitrix to get him back to normal. In dread, Ken turned back to look for his father, only to see him lying face-down on the ground, completely still.

"Dad!"

Devlin couldn't make himself move, as thoroughly immobilized by the shock as Ben had been by the array. Nothing seemed to register in his mind. Ben was lying on the ground, unmoving after the spell. Ken ran over to him, checked his pulse, and with a stricken look of horror on his face, started CPR. He could see everything that was going on, but it was all completely meaningless.

Because the meaning he didn't want to face was that he'd failed, and now his father was paying the price.

* * *

Someone had gotten them all out of there. Devlin didn't know who or how, but if he had to guess, he'd say that Great-Grandpa Max had pulled it all off. Ben was rushed to the complex's medical ward, and the Plumbers had more or less taken over the case. The Magical Division and Investigations were handling the scene and all the evidence, but they were keeping everything as quiet as possible. The last thing they wanted was for any of the Tennysons' enemies to know what had happened and take advantage of Ben's condition or try to finish him off. With Charmcaster still loose, the risk of discovery was already high.

And with everything out of his hands, Devlin sat alone outside the medical ward, leaning forward in his chair. In his human hand, he fiddled with his locket, but his gaze was transfixed on the floor. He felt numb, his mind blank. He couldn't believe this was happening.

"Hey," Ken called weakly. Devlin didn't look up at him. Ken pointed at his arm and said, "You got stuck again." He lifted the Omnitrix and said, "Reset biofield," before reaching out to place his hand on Devlin's alien-form shoulder. Bright green bio-energy flashed from the watch, reverting his arm to normal. Ken's hand lingered on Devlin's shoulder for a moment, but unable to bear the feeling, Devlin pulled away.

"Listen," Ken insisted. "Dad's going to be…" Devlin looked up, challenging him to say "okay." As weary blue eyes met red-rimmed green, Ken sighed and lowered his head.

"Dad's alive, at least," he said. "They've got him on life-support. Whatever Charmcaster did to him, his body doesn't have the strength to work on its own."

"I should have been faster," Devlin said.

Ken shook his head, sighing, "You didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one who was stupid enough to run into that battle. If Dad didn't try to rescue me…"

"If I wasn't completely useless…"

"That's enough, both of you," came a stern voice, and they both looked over to see Max exiting the medical ward, leaning heavily on his cane. The old man was over a hundred years old, and the years had certainly worn him down, but when he spoke with that kind of steel in his voice, nobody could help but listen. Max looked at his great-grandsons seriously, but not unkindly, and said, "Gwendolyn should be here soon to help, but in the meantime, blaming yourselves isn't going to help your dad—or you."

What he said made some sense, but Devlin couldn't do much more than half-heartedly nod. Ken, on the other hand, was better had taking orders from Max, no matter the situation.

"Yeah," he promised. "We'll keep it together."

"Good," Max answered, and he looked over at Devlin. "You were the only one still conscious when Charmcaster used that spell. Do you remember anything about it?"

Devlin tried to focus, but the exercise was as futile as trying to stem the guilt clawing at his heart. He shook his head. "I might have heard a few words, but I can't remember them now."

Max nodded. "We'll need to wait for Gwendolyn, then. She should be able to dredge it from your memory." Devlin nodded, albeit reluctantly. Ten years, and he still didn't feel any more comfortable around magic than he had before he joined the Tennyson family. Incidents like this always seemed to make that discomfort worse.

"We'll figure this out," Max promised. "I just need you two to hang in there. _Ben _needs you to."

"All right," Ken answered. "I'll get to work on the security systems. See if there's anything we can use to track down Charmcaster. You coming, Dev?"

"No, I'll stay here a bit," Devlin answered.

Ken nodded. "Okay. Great-Grandpa, I'm going to need your help with the computer."

They walked away, heading toward the main computer control room. Devlin sighed and leaned back into his chair, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes. With the world around him shut out, he could see the battle all over again. He clutched his locket tightly, fighting the sense of helplessness that had gripped him since Ben had fallen. He'd attacked the spellbook, burned it. And it hadn't done anything to help. In fact, he might have made things worse.

He loosened his hold on the locket and opened his eyes, putting the necklace back on as he stood up. There was something he had to do right now, or else he'd have more regrets than he already did.

* * *

Ken dealt with stress best by keeping busy. Tinkering, programming—if his hands were occupied, so too was his mind, and he could stop focusing on the stress. And so, he was in Grey Matter's form, in the wires of the main computer, trying to find a way to boost the connection to the Plumbers' and the Galactic Enforcers' networks. With Charmcaster currently on the Tennysons' most wanted list, they needed every resource at their disposal in order to catch her.

Grey Matter looked over at the small, hovering, holographic screen next to him. "How's the signal, Great-Grandpa?"

"Better for the Plumbers, but Synaptek's systems aren't compatible with ours," Max replied. "I'm going to try to another sequencing code."

"I'll be there in a minute," Grey Matter promised, but another portion of the screen caught his attention.

He dragged over the security footage in the medical ward, the video monitoring his dad's condition. Devlin had walked into the room, just as quiet and depressed as he'd been when they left him. He held still for a moment as he looked at Ben, but finally, he made himself walk over. The mike caught his words:

"I'm sorry, Dad."

Ken hurriedly turned off the screen, knowing he'd heard something he shouldn't have. It was too private, too personal, and he had no right to witness it. Finishing his work, he climbed out of the control panel and transformed back, racing to help Max and trying to forget the words he didn't mean to hear.

**The title for this chapter comes from Dylan Thomas's poem, known as "Do not go gentle into that good night," which coincidentally, was written for the poet's dying father. As I don't speak any Latin, Charmcaster's named spells either come from canon or are pieced together from Latin phrases off Wikipedia. The main spell ("Ars longa, vita brevis. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Beati possidentes. Memento mori.") is strung together from four different phrases: "Art is long, live is short," "nothing comes from nothing," "blessed are those who possess," and "remember your mortality/remember to die." I figured these were completely fitting for such a spell, draining life energy from people to fuel your own magic. The term "biofield" (for "bio-electric/bio-energy field") is shamelessly ripped from **_**Power Rangers RPM**_**.**


	4. The Dying of the Light

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Three: "The Dying of the Light"

Devlin walked into the medical ward and stopped short when he saw Ben lying in the bed, connected to various devices. There was a ventilator, an IV drip, a heart monitor with automatic defibrillator… It was hard to look past all the medical machinery and see the man underneath, the one who had always stood strong against anything.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Devlin said, his voice nearly cracking.

It was a word he'd never called Ben. Sure, he'd _referred_ to him as his father without a problem the past decade, but actually _calling _him "Dad" was another thing entirely. "Dad" had been a monster who had thrown him aside like garbage. It had never felt right trying to call Ben that.

"I screwed up again," he confessed. "I don't know what's wrong with me. Every time I try to do something good, it backfires. I tried to release Da—Kevin—and he tried to kill you. Now, I tried to stop Charmcaster's spell, and I might have really killed you this time."

The sound of air pumping, the sound of the monitor beeping—the slow, steady rhythms were maddening. They shouldn't have been this slow. They shouldn't have been here at all.

"Ken thinks it's his fault because you saved him. But I know better. I didn't think through the situation. I lost my temper again. I charged Charmcaster and I attacked her book, and because I didn't think, you have to pay for it."

"At least you understand."

Devlin turned in surprise at the sound of Gwendolyn's voice. The sorceress must have come straight from the scene of the attack—there were evidence packs clipped to her belt. She gave Devlin a soft smile as she walked over, coming to her cousin's bedside with an ironic quirk on her lips.

"I told you not to fight her without calling me first," she scolded. "It's just like you, Ben. You never listen. For a cousin, you sure act like an annoying little brother sometimes."

"Aunt Gwendolyn?" Devlin asked as she reached for a Charm of Bezel.

Gently, she removed the Charm from her sleeve and held it over Ben. The rune for Reincarnation flared to life in golden light. With the same gentle movements, Gwendolyn placed the Charm on Ben's chest, and gold light suddenly surrounded him. Devlin had to turn away from the brightness of the light, but he could hear the effects as the magic did its work: the heart monitor began to beat more regularly, and the ventilator stopped pumping quite so hard.

The light faded around Ben, but the Charm still remained active. Watching it, Gwendolyn said, "We'll be able to start taking him off some of this equipment. The Charm's doing enough to help his body."

It hit Devlin suddenly that Gwendolyn hadn't so much as flinched from the bright flash of the magic. He tried to hide the uneasiness from his voice as he asked, "Won't you need that?"

"He needs it more," she insisted. Turning toward him, she said, "Come on. We need to get to work."

* * *

After Gwendolyn managed to get a record of Devlin's and Ken's memories of the attack, they all gathered in the control room to go over the evidence. The lights were dim, with ambient light from the main computer and Gwendolyn's magic as she displayed the various crime scenes Charmcaster had been present at since she'd discovered this spell. Devlin flinched at the sight of the other victims. Rigor mortis had set in quickly thanks to the spell, freezing the looks of horror on their faces.

"Dad…" Ken started, but he had to clear his throat before he could continue. "Dad didn't look like that."

"Charmcaster probably didn't finish the spell," Max realized.

Gwendolyn nodded. "With all the others, we've arrived too late to help them. She's drained every last bit of life energy from their bodies. When Devlin attacked her, he interrupted the ritual, so she couldn't take the last of it."

Ken looked over at Devlin, giving him a look he probably thought was reassuring. "You saved his life."

"But I also destroyed the cure, didn't I?" Devlin challenged, looking at Gwendolyn.

Solemnly, she nodded and took out another evidence pack. The Archamada Book of Spells was sealed in plastic—or at least, what was _left_ of the book. Char patterns were present all over the cover, and several of the pages had been reduced to ash.

"It might be magic, but paper still burns at Fahrenheit four fifty-one," she said. "We've tried magical trace, but the page with the spell on it was reduced to ash. The counterspell would have been on the same page."

"The Archamada is old," Max reminded her. "Standards may have been different when it was written. Are you sure it wasn't on another page?"

"I've looked through it," Gwendolyn answered. "None of the spells left produce any similar effects."

Devlin gripped the edge of the steel table tightly enough that he put dents in it. Seeing his distress, Ken asked, "Isn't there any other spell you could try? Something from another book?"

"The Archamada is _the_ authority on the highest-level spells and magic," Gwendolyn explained. "If something's not in there, then it's not in any other book."

"There's got to be something," Ken insisted. "What about time-travel? You managed that once, didn't you?"

The entire room went silent as everyone stared at Ken. Even Devlin gave him a look that said it was a stupid idea. Finally, Gwendolyn said, "I can't go back in time to retrieve something that already exists in our time. Displacing anything in time can have dangerous effects. If I went back and took the Archamada, I'd leave behind a magical trace on the page I used. Even if I put it back, it would be there. Magic calls to magic. The next mage who picked it up would know to look there."

Ken lowered his head. "Sorry. It was stupid."

"Not completely stupid," Gwendolyn insisted. "Whenever someone travels through time, it branches off to create an entirely new timeline—a separate world. Worlds are more difficult to travel to, but if I can find a point in time when that spell exists, it might be easier."

"Magic calls to magic," Ken realized. He practically leapt up from the table as he said, "Send me. I can find the book and get it back to you guys."

"It's dangerous," Gwendolyn warned. "It would have to be a one-way trip. I'm already using one of the Charms for your dad. I won't have the energy to keep a portal open that long."

"I don't care," Ken insisted. "Dad's life is in danger, and this might be his only shot. I'll find the other version of you in the timeline and explain everything."

"You can't," Max argued. "With Ben out of commission, you're the only one with an Omnitrix. Anything attacks, you're the one who's best-qualified to handle it."

Ken deflated, staring at him as he tried to protest. But he knew that Max was right. Charmcaster was still out there, along with any number of the family's enemies. Max was too old, Gwendolyn had to focus on the investigation and healing Ben, and Devlin's powers were unreliable. Ken's Omnitrix was their only hope.

"I'll go," Devlin said, standing up.

"No," Ken protested, turning toward him. "If you're doing this because you think it's your fault, you're wrong."

"But it _is_," Devlin insisted. "The book's destroyed because of me."

"I'm the one Dad had to save," Ken reminded him. "If anything, I'm the one who got him into this mess!"

"But you didn't hear the spell," Devlin argued. "Aunt Gwendolyn can bring the words up in my mind, so I'll be able to match them to the book. I'm the only one who can find it."

Ken was looking at him with desperation and reluctance. "But…"

"I'll be okay," Devlin promised. "You take care of things here. I'll get the spell."

"_If_ we do this," Gwendolyn interrupted, staring at them pointedly. "I already said this could be dangerous. We don't know who might have the book in another world. It could already be in Charmcaster's hands."

"Then I'll just take the spell," Devlin said. "Ken was right—it's Ben's only chance. Every second we waste is killing him."

"It's exactly that kind of impatience that got the both of you in trouble," Max warned. "You just said yourself that you should have thought your situation through."

"I did this time," Devlin insisted. "If anyone can think of something better, say it. Otherwise, let me do this."

The desperation was painted all over his face, and the pain in his plea was impossible to ignore. At long last, Max sighed and looked away. Devlin looked over at Gwendolyn, and her eyes were closed, her expression set.

"Please," he begged.

"All right," she relented. "Meet me in the library. I'll get everything set in there."

She turned on her heel and stormed off, and Devlin watched her hesitantly. The door hissed shut behind her, and everything was silent for a moment.

"It's not your fault," Max explained as he got up to leave. "You just remind her too much of your father sometimes."

Devlin lowered his head, his expression sour. "Oh."

Ken put a hand on his shoulder. "Not Kevin, trust me."

Devlin shot him a puzzled look, but before he could ask, Max called, "You'd better head to the armory. You're going to need to restock your belt before you go."

"Right," Devlin remembered, racing to the door.

* * *

Devlin adjusted the cloak to make sure he had easy access to his belt. The nestled, scarf-like hood kept the cloak together, but if he needed to move fast, the folds of the cloak opened to reveal his weapons. One tonfa was strapped to either of his thighs, and his belt was freshly stocked with flash grenades, fire-bombs, and containment capsules.

"You sure you want to do this?" Ken asked.

"I have to," Devlin responded.

Ken snorted and shook his head. "You decided this the minute you heard the idea."

Devlin managed a half-smile. "I told Great-Grandpa I thought it through, didn't I?"

Ken snickered as they started walking to the library. But soon enough, his expression became distant, and he admitted, "You know, when you first came here, I was pretty jealous."

Devlin looked at him in surprise. "What?"

"Dad took time off and was actually home for a few weeks, trying to help you adjust. Meanwhile, he missed about six of my birthdays in a row. I wasn't sure what to think."

"Ken," Devlin hesitated, trying to think of some way to assure him that he'd never meant to be a problem.

"But I realized how dumb I was soon enough," Ken insisted. "Pretty much around the time you lost it and tried to destroy that old ID bracelet." Devlin nodded, remembering how they'd first learned how bad his unstable biofield could be. He'd morphed an arm and gotten stuck for hours. "I realized then how bad it was for you and how much you needed the help."

"I never meant to take up Ben's time," Devlin promised. "Or to make you jealous."

Ken shook his head, grinning. "I know. Besides, what little brother isn't jealous of his big brother sometimes?"

They reached the library and found the doors marked off with an array in chalk. Seeing the ward, Ken said, "Well, this is my stop." He held up a hand. "Take care of yourself, got it?"

Devlin clasped his hand. "You too. I'll be back as soon as I can." Letting go, he put a hand against the array. The magic circle glowed, and after a moment, the doors opened to admit him. Ken watched as the doors closed behind him before he finally walked away.

Devlin tucked the locket under his clothes again as he walked inside the library. All around, Gwendolyn had drawn various runes and arrays with chalk, leaving a large circle in the center of the room, marked with runes. A triangle was inscribed in the circle, its points marked off by candles.

He could feel his skin prickling. This was big magic.

"Aunt Gwendolyn?" he called out.

"I'm here," she said, stepping forward with a battered old scroll. "I needed to find the spell."

He cast an uneasy glance at the large array and asked, "Wouldn't that have been in the Archamada?"

"It was," she admitted. "But years ago, I managed to tear out the page. We'd just defeated Hex, and he decided to cut his losses and try another world to conquer. I made sure he couldn't."

Devlin gave her a hesitant look. "I'm afraid to ask."

"Don't be," she answered with a smile. "I just stripped him of his magic. He lived a long enough life—behind bars." He managed to laugh in relief. Seeing that he was still nervous, she asked, "Are you afraid?"

He hesitated for a moment before answering, "Terrified."

"You should be," she admitted. "This is more than a long shot."

"What other choice do I have?" he replied. "Ben needs this, no matter how small the chance."

Gwendolyn gave him a sad smile. "I wish I could give you the Charm of Luck for this."

Devlin shook his head. "No, you guys need it more here." Ben needed all the luck he could get.

"But I'm not letting you go without giving you something." She took a small silver blaster in a holster and handed it to him. "Here. Call it an anniversary present."

He took it from her hands and looked the blaster over, noticing the runes carved into the side, particularly the runes for Luck near the barrel. "Magic?"

She smiled. "A little. Just to correct your aim."

Devlin snickered and clipped the holster to the back of his belt. "Thanks."

She unrolled the paper and pointed at the triangle within the circle. "Stand inside there."

He started to walk over, but a thought hit him suddenly. Looking back at her, he asked, "If that spell's in the Archamada in the other world, I'm going to have to tear it out. That way another Hex or Charmcaster doesn't try to use it."

Gwendolyn gave him a look of surprise for a moment before smiling. "Good thinking." Her eyes glowed blue as she placed a hand against one of his temples. Pale blue light filled his vision, and he knew that his eyes had to be glowing too.

When it was finished, he pulled away, trying to hide his alarm. "What was that?"

"A simple memory charm," she explained. "It'll help you match the spells you've heard to the Archamada—both this one and the one Charmcaster used on Ben."

That made sense. It was a little disturbing, but it was helpful. Devlin nodded and made his way over to the array.

"Remember," Gwendolyn warned. "I won't be able to open this again. You'll have to find an alternate of me or some other mage who can handle high-level sorcery."

"I understand," Devlin answered, pulling up the hood on his cloak.

Gwendolyn nodded and began to recite the spell: "Aut viam inveniam aut faciam."

Bright blue light spiraled throughout the array, spreading both along the circle itself and in the triangle. The light hit the candles, and the flames flickered as if a sudden wind blew.

"Nec spe, nec petu."

The runes along the walls and the rest of the floor began to glow, and glittering traces of blue magic, like stars, began to float all around him.

"In omnia paratus."

The candle flames suddenly surged, tracing the triangle in a ten-foot wall of fire. Devlin nearly jumped in shock, but he quelled his fear and stood his ground.

"Omne ignotum pro magnifico."

The starlight circled the flames in a manic dance, and the air rushed all around in a whirlwind. It became harder and harder for Devlin to hear Gwendolyn's voice as she read the last words of the spell:

"Sic itur ad astra."

In a blinding flash of light, everything seemed to wink out of existence. Once she was sure the spell had been cast, Gwendolyn held up a magic-lit hand. The arrays and runes were burnt, reduced to charred dust. The candles had been blown out, leaving only smoke. And Devlin was gone.

"Good luck," she said.

* * *

In a whirlwind of stars and flames, Devlin appeared inside a small bedroom. For a moment, he looked around in confusion, wondering if Gwendolyn had miscalculated, but he reminded himself that magic called magic. The Archamada had to be near.

He looked around the room before finding several books on a shelf. He slowly moved his hand down the line of books before he saw the one he needed. Quickly, he pulled it out and flipped through the pages. As if drawn to the correct spells, he saw certain words glowing in his vision until he'd finally found the right string of them.

"Here it is," he realized. "Beati possidentes, memento mori."

The words were blazing in blue light, with the earlier words fainter. Below was another spell, prefaced by the words "Contra: Vivere"—the counterspell. He started to tear the page out when he heard a door open next to him.

"Who are you?" demanded a female voice, oddly familiar.

Devlin immediately got into a defensive stance, but the unknown girl held out a hand glowing with pink magic. His eyes widened in terror, and she sent a blast of energy at him. The Archamada fell out of his hands as he flew into the wall, pinned against it by some kind of magical construct. The girl held her hand up, maintaining the link to the construct as she leaned over and picked up the fallen book.

"I don't know who you are," she growled, her eyes glowing bright pink, "but you're going to give me answers."

**The title for this chapter also comes from the Dylan Thomas poem, finishing off the famous couplet: "Do not go gentle into that good night / Rage, rage against the dying of the light." As with the Mori Spell, the Astra Spell is composed of several Latin phrases I picked from Wikipedia: "Aut viam inveniam aut faciam" ("I will find or make a way"—attributed to Hannibal), "nec spe, nec petu" ("without hope, without fear"), "in omnia paratus" ("ready for anything"), "omne ignotum pro magnifico" ("everything unknown appears magnificent"), and "sic itur ad astra" ("thus you will go to the stars"). Ken's comment about Gwendolyn having used time travel once is a direct reference to "Ben 10,000"—I'd always gotten the impression that "Ken 10" took place within the same universe (particularly given Ben's insistence on moving the Null Void Chamber after he'd said Animo had broken in). The further rules for time-travel are based off the 2009 **_**Star Trek**_** movie, where a new timeline branches off from the main **_**Star Trek**_** timeline, thanks to the actions of Nero.**


	5. Worlds Enough and Time

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Four: "Worlds Enough and Time"

Devlin barely had the chance to get a good look at the girl before she unleashed a whirlwind of pink energy, transporting them to some kind of facility. When the magic let them go, Devlin fell onto some sort of platform, and the girl hurriedly stumbled over and activated a console, encasing the whole platform in green energy.

"A containment field?" he asked, placing his hand against the forcefield.

The girl was leaning heavily against the panel, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. In one hand, she held some kind of comm device.

"Guys?" she called into it. "I'm at Los Soledad. I've got things under control, but I'm going to need you. And bring aspirin."

Once she'd finished her call, the girl fell to the ground and didn't get up. Whether she was unconscious or just resting, Devlin couldn't tell. But he _could_ tell that she had long red hair and a very familiar face.

"Aunt Gwendolyn?" he murmured in shock. But that couldn't be right. Her magical energy signature was pink instead of blue. And where were the Charms of Bezel?

Only a few minutes in this brave new world, and already he didn't like it. He had to figure out how to get Gwendolyn's trust here and convince her to hand over the spells. But how he was going to do that while trapped was just as much of a mystery as everything else about this place.

* * *

Ken pulled on a pair of latex gloves as he stood over the evidence, now relocated to the complex's lab. Sure, there were machines and all sorts of things that could do a thorough job of the forensics, but sometimes, it needed a person's judgment. Sometimes, the old ways were best.

He broke the seal on the evidence bag for the Archamada and slipped the book out of the plastic. Most college kids wouldn't know half of what he did about handling evidence, but then, most college kids didn't have practically their entire family so deeply involved in fighting alien crimes that they were trusted with their own investigations. Ken and Devlin had been raised with all of that expertise as second-nature, and they knew exactly what they were doing in this kind of situation.

Flakes of ash fell out of the book as he opened it to the first intact page. Frowning at the obscuring chars, he ran a scanner over the page and began manipulating the image on a holographic monitor. Under an alternative light source, the words became clear, providing a brief description of the spell and how to cast it, in addition to the spell itself.

Investigations had provided stills of the scene, and he examined these closely. Overhead shots flagged where everyone had been when the attack occurred, with special detail on Charmcaster's position relative to Ben during the spell. Something bothered him about the whole thing, and he brought up video of the attack, commandeered from floating security cameras nearby. He watched the end of the battle, when Devlin had burned the Archamada and disrupted the whole ritual. Charmcaster's staff had been glowing, but the glow suddenly faded as the spell fell apart, and it fell to the ground. Ken frowned again and backtracked to just before the spell, when he'd been trapped by the array. Charmcaster had pointed her staff toward the ground to create the circle, but it was standing straight up as she performed the spell.

No, he chastised himself, shaking his head. That was speculation—the worst possible thing for an investigator. He had to look at this like a scientist—the facts and evidence had to come first, not the theory. Speculation could blind you to the truth if you weren't careful, and he had to be as careful as possible if he was going to save his dad.

Still, it didn't mean he couldn't look into it some more. Saving all of the digital evidence, he resealed the Archamada and made a note of it on the evidence log before leaving the lab, tossing his gloves into the recycler on the way out.

There was more to this mess than met the eye, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.

* * *

About half an hour after the younger Gwendolyn put out her call, two other teenagers arrived—a brown-haired boy in a green jacket and a muscular, black-haired boy in black. The moment they saw her lying on the floor, they ran over to her with a cry of "Gwen!"

"I'm okay," she insisted as they rushed to her side. She just opened her eyes to smile at the taller of the boys before looking at the other. "Did you bring the aspirin?"

He smiled slightly and fished a bottle out of his pocket. "Here. I'll get you some water."

"You're a lifesaver," she replied, taking the pills from him.

As his friend left to find some water, the other boy scolded, "I thought you said you weren't going to use that spell again."

"Sorry," she apologized. "I didn't have much of a choice. I found _him_."

She gestured toward Devlin, and the boy looked over at him with a glare. For a moment, Devlin just gave him a confused look. There was something eerily familiar about that stare, something he couldn't quite place…

"Got the water," the shorter boy said, walking in with a cup. As he handed it to Gwendolyn, he said, "It's not the best, but…"

"It'll do," she answered, swallowing a couple of pills.

The shorter boy stood up and looked over at Devlin, and with a start, Devlin realized who he was. Impossibly slight, the teenage Ben was a far cry from the muscular demigod he still was even at fifty. But there was no mistaking him, especially not when he crossed his arms, displaying part of the Omnitrix—oddly in green instead of silver and black, but it was as unmistakable as he was.

Seeing him was surreal. At this age, Ben looked exactly like Ken had in high school. The slightly confused look on his face also looked more like something Devlin would see on Ken instead. Ben always knew exactly what he was doing; it was bizarre seeing him so young and inexperienced.

"What's this guy's story?" the other asked, and Devlin still couldn't figure out why he seemed so familiar and why he couldn't place the name.

"I don't know," Gwendolyn answered, slowly getting to her feet. Her friend held her arm protectively, trying to help maintain her balance, and didn't let go even when she was standing. With how weak she'd been after that spell, Devlin couldn't quite blame him. "I found him in my room, trying to steal the Archamada. I didn't want to take any chances, so I teleported him here."

"Good idea," Ben agreed, still not changing his expression. Devlin got the feeling Ben was giving him the same look that he himself was giving the third teenager, and he found himself grateful for the hood. It didn't conceal him completely, but it did make him a little less recognizable.

"What did you want with the book?" Ben asked.

"I need it," Devlin pleaded. "My father's dying from a spell—the counterspell is in that book."

There was a look of hesitation on Ben's face—something Devlin had never seen from him before. However, it was apparently much more familiar to the others, because the last teen left Gwendolyn and placed himself between Ben and the control panel.

"No way," he argued. "You're not doing this again."

"Doing what again?" Ben asked.

"Falling for another guy's sob story," he answered. "Every time you do that, you drag us into a war zone."

"I do not!" Ben insisted, his voice pitching higher in indignation.

"Last time, you got yourself electrocuted," his friend reminded him. "You remember Gwen having to carry you out of the garage because you nearly got killed?" Devlin tried his hardest not to flinch, but Ben only scowled. "Or how about the time you listened to Vilgax and got yourself possessed by Ghostfreak?"

"Hey, he was right about that one!"

"Or the time you got manipulated by that Spidermonkey and nearly stole that communications crystal from the Plumbers' base?"

"But that was a…"

"And does the name 'Michael Morningstar' ring a bell?"

It was hard for Devlin to resist the urge to roll his eyes. There went the theory that Ben's trust was hard to get. The next time Ken complained about it, Devlin was going to hit him.

Ben, meanwhile, was practically sulking. "Okay, fine. I think you made your point."

"If you two are done fighting," Gwendolyn interrupted, "we still have to figure out what to do about this guy."

The three of them turned their attention back to Devlin, and despite how young they were, he began to feel nervous under their gaze. Maybe they were kids, but it was clear they weren't as inexperienced as he'd first thought. They'd done enough that they might as well have been full-grown Plumbers or Galactic Enforcers, the way they were looking at him.

"Who are you?" Gwendolyn insisted.

Instinct told Devlin to give a fake name, but he still needed to get their trust. At the same time, giving his last name wouldn't be a good thing at all—after all, this still involved time travel. And giving his original last name was right out; maybe this Ben was naïve enough to trust Vilgax at some point, but he wouldn't let himself get fooled twice.

"My name's Devlin," he said. "And it's just like I said—my father was attacked, and the only way I can save him is with that book! I can prove it—the spell is called the Mori Spell, and it drained the lifeforce from him."

Ben immediately looked at Gwendolyn and asked, "Is that even possible?"

"I guess so," she answered. "Grandma Verdona was able to draw off the mana from any living thing, but she didn't drain it _completely_. It would have to be a really high-level spell."

"It was," Devlin insisted. "Please. I have to save him."

The third, the cynic, snorted. "Right. And how do we know that you're not just going to use this against us the minute we give it to you?"

Ben groaned. "Come _on_, Kevin!"

The name struck Devlin like a blow, and he realized just why he didn't want to recognize him. "Kevin? Kevin Levin?"

"Who wants to know?" asked the accused.

Rage surged within Devlin, and he slammed his fists against the containment field, ignoring the mild shock he got from the energy. All the pain, the anger, and the memories were back in a flash, racing in his mind as he stared at his biological father, some thirty years younger. He wanted to unleash all of that all over again on Kevin, but instead he turned and shouted at that idiot Ben, "How can you work with him?"

Ben's expression went inexplicably cold, and he calmly said, "Kevin's made up for his past. If it weren't for him, we'd never have defeated the Highbreed or Vilgax. He's earned our trust."

How could Ben be so stupid? First, he trusted Vilgax, and now Kevin? What was he thinking? Devlin was about to say these very things, but before he had the chance, the wall exploded to his left. Without a word, Gwendolyn raised a pink energy shield, protecting her, Ben, and Kevin from splintered wood flying everywhere. Devlin raised an arm to defend himself and half-turned out of instinct, but the containment field kept the debris at bay.

A young woman with silver hair appeared in the dust cloud, wearing a tight-fitting purple dress. Once again, there was no way not to recognize the past version, and Devlin felt a sense of dread. Magic called magic. He'd been sent here with a high-level spell. Of _course_ it would have caught Charmcaster's attention.

The forcefield dropped, and Ben, Gwendolyn, and Kevin immediately got ready to fight. Kevin reached for a metal panel and somehow managed to absorb it, a steel coating forming all over his body. Ben had the Omnitrix out, his hand on the dial—he probably hadn't yet accessed the Master Control—while Gwendolyn stood in an attack stance, her hands surrounded by pink energy.

Charmcaster smirked at them and held her hands out. "I'll be taking back that book you borrowed from us, Gwen."

"Sorry, library's closed," Ben quipped, selecting a form on the Omnitrix. He slammed the dial down, and his body was absorbed by a flash of green light. When it faded, a plantlike alien was in his place, hands producing flames. "Swampfire!"

As the battle began, Devlin pounded harder against the containment field. Things were spiraling out of control, and if he was going to get anything back on track, he needed to get out of here.

* * *

The simulation room was usually used for training, but Ken had hacked it for other purposes before. Creating a perfect replica of a crime scene was simple. As he began to punch in variables into the data pad, Great-Grandpa and Aunt Gwendolyn looked at him in confusion.

"Why did you recreate the first attack?" Gwendolyn asked.

"I need to show you guys something," Ken insisted. "Something important I found in the evidence."

"Investigations is going over everything," Max reminded him. "They would have seen it."

"Not really," Ken argued. Lowering the data pad, he explained, "They look at a case like cops—all a matter of trying to catch the culprit and match the evidence to the crime. They don't look at things like a doctor."

Gwendolyn smirked slightly. "And you do?"

Seriously, Ken answered, "This time I do," and Gwendolyn stopped smirking. He entered the data and said, "It's the same process, but a different approach."

Drawing on the stills and video of the first attack, Ken created holograms of Charmcaster and her first victim, a male Kineceleran who had been out for a morning jog. Using evidence they'd obtained from the attack on Ben, he managed to recreate the process of the spell.

"When she's about to cast the spell, Charmcaster throws down an array," he narrated. "See? She points her staff directly at the ground."

"Okay," Gwendolyn answered. "But what does this have to do with…"

"Watch," he insisted.

The Charmcaster hologram brought up her staff again, planting it into the ground as she began to cast the spell. At that point, Ken changed the scenery slightly, bringing up the scene exactly as Investigations had left it, with an evidence flag placed over a mild burn mark, right where the staff had been.

"See it?" he asked. "Watch, it's in every one of the crime scenes."

The next two didn't have any video evidence, so he recreated everything from the stills left by Investigations. In both, there was a flag on a light burn on the ground. In the third, video evidence showed Charmcaster planting her staff into the ground again, and in the Investigations evidence, there was yet another burn flagged.

"Her staff's giving off some kind of energy discharge," Max realized.

"A staff does have power in it," Gwendolyn explained. "It takes someone with magical talent to draw it out. Something like this could be normal."

"Easy assumption," Ken pointed out. "It could be natural energy discharge from the staff's own power. But Investigations always says to follow the evidence, not assumptions. Watch this."

The scenery changed again, reenacting the battle. Charmcaster pointed her staff at the ground to create the array underneath Ken, then brought it straight up as she revealed the Archamada. It was hard to watch all over again as a hologram of Ben leapt up and threw Ken out of the way, trapping himself instead, but Ken managed to keep his cool as hologram-Charmcaster performed the spell.

"This is what you dredged from Devlin's memories," Ken said, keeping his voice calm. "See? That aura—the white energy—is going directly to the staff."

"It's storing the power," Gwendolyn realized. "It adds to the staff's own power, making any spell Charmcaster casts with it stronger."

"Exactly," Ken replied, moving ahead a little, to the moments just before Devlin attacked. "Devlin said that the staff was burning brightly, bright enough to wake him up. When he attacked the book," The hologram of Devlin sent a blast of fire at the Archamada, "the staff went dead and fell. But look." He cut ahead to evidence from Investigations. Once again, there was a scorch on the ground—exactly where Charmcaster had placed her staff, burned there by the energy of the spell.

"Why didn't we see this?" Gwendolyn asked.

"Magical Division might have, but not for the same reasons," Ken explained. "You're looking for what spell was cast and how. Not how to reverse it."

"All of Ben's energy that Charmcaster took is in her staff," Max realized. "We need to get that staff back, before Devlin can return with the counterspell."

"Right, but we've got another problem," Ken said. "The law of conservation of energy."

Gwendolyn paled. "Energy can't be created or destroyed."

"Just changed," Ken finished. "And the theory of relativity says that energy and mass are related and transmutable."

"We've managed to overcome a lot of Einstein's limitations," Max reminded him.

"But at the same time, it describes something simple," Ken argued. "That staff has a certain amount of volume—which is also related to mass. It can only hold so much, like a glass can only hold so much water before it spills out. If I tried to charge a power cell beyond its capacity, it would explode."

"But the staff keeps adding energy without going beyond its capacity," Gwendolyn realized. "Because every time she uses it, Charmcaster drains off some of the energy she's added."

"This is why she's attacked five people," Ken explained. "She's used up the lifeforce she drained from them. Theoretically, we can probably reverse that spell if we have the counterspell and the staff, even if the victim's dead. But if there's no energy left…"

The implication hit them immediately, and Max ordered, "Find that staff."

"I'm on it," Ken answered, setting down the data pad and racing out of the room.

As her nephew dashed out, Gwendolyn looked sorrowfully on the evidence. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked back to see her grandfather reaching up to offer comfort.

"The boys will get the job done," he affirmed. Gwendolyn nodded, knowing that they couldn't afford to doubt them. Not with so much at stake.

**The title for this chapter comes from the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell. Continuing from last chapter, this tries to merge the two major instances of time-travel magic seen in the **_**Ben 10 **_**universe—or multiverse, for that matter. In "Time Heals," Gwen created an entirely new timeline after trying to change the past. There was some level of permanence: the Gwen from the bad future tried to stop the good future Gwen from changing the course of history, indicating that at that moment, the timelines existed parallel to one another. Not to mention the fact that bad future Gwen was able to exist in the bad future at all, given her counterpart had been dead for some time. This theory posits that like in the 2009 **_**Star Trek**_** movie, changing something from time travel causes time to branch off, creating a new timeline. And the bad future and parallel Paradox as seen in "Paradox" support that theory too. All bullshit science trying to apply various laws and theories in physics to sci-fi/fantasy rules is mine, however, and I apologize to those who know physics much better than that.**


	6. Under Pressure

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Five: "Under Pressure"

The opening salvo came from Ben, as Swampfire blasted flames directly at Charmcaster. She twirled her staff rapidly, shielding herself from the attack. But it only served as a smokescreen for Kevin, who leapt up and attacked her from above. She narrowly dodged the punch, twisted out of the way, and fired electricity from her staff.

"Sorry, boys," she mocked, "but Gwen's my dance partner tonight. Don't worry, I think you'll like your dates." A portal opened behind her, and two golems came through, standing at her side. She pointed at the boys. "Get them!"

As the golems charged at them, Kevin smirked at Swampfire.

"I'll take Caroline," he said. "You go for the last girl who dumped you."

"Hey, she didn't dump me!" Swampfire tried to protest, but Kevin was already pounding away at his golem. The second tried to grab Swampfire, but he held it off with a flame-charged uppercut, muttering, "Elena's going to kill me if she finds out about this."

With the boys occupied, that left Gwen and Charmcaster to battle. Charmcaster blasted more lightning from her staff, but Gwen tumbled out of the way of one blast before raising a small shield against another. It held long enough for the lightning to dissipate, and Gwen let the construct shatter as she hurled an energy burst at Charmcaster. Charmcaster just dodged it, and it destroyed the building across from the holding cell.

Devlin continued to try to get out of the containment field, but once everyone was outside and out of sight, he became more frantic. Gwendolyn—well, Gwen, if Ben and Kevin weren't just calling her that to annoy her—had the Archamada, and if Charmcaster got her hands on the Mori Spell _here _too…

"That's it," he decided, pulling out his blaster and aiming at the generator above him. He fired several shots and ducked under the protection of his cloak. The machine began to spark and sputter out bits of hot metal debris, which Devlin was mostly protected from. The containment field vanished, and he raced out into the fray.

The battle was absolute chaos. Abandoned, derelict buildings were being smashed left and right as people were being thrown across the field. Lightning crackled all around from the fight between Charmcaster and Gwen. Devlin looked around, unsure where he should go. Should he risk running into a battle between mages so he could get the book, or would it be better to try to fight the golems?

The decision was made for him the moment he saw one of the golems backhand Swampfire, destroying his head. Without a second thought, Devlin grabbed his tonfa and ran at the golem with a furious cry, keeping the long end of the shafts guarding his forearms. He ducked in as the golem made to swing, blocking the attack with his guarded arm. Twirling the second tonfa's handle to bring the shaft forward, he swung at the golem's head. The hard, purple crystal vibrated with the blow, but it did not break. Devlin's weapons were better than that. Bringing the other tonfa to attack position, he swung repeatedly at the golem's head, moving quickly to knock its arms away when it tried to hit him.

There was a green flash behind him, and Cannonbolt came rolling through, barreling into the golem. Momentum sent the golem flying, ultimately crashing into another ruined building. Cannonbolt unrolled and stood in front of Devlin, who was still in shock at his recovery.

"Thanks for the backup, Kev—wait, _you_?" Cannonbolt asked, looking at Devlin in surprise. Belatedly, Devlin realized his hood had fallen when he joined the fight, and Ben was still looking at him like he recognized him.

"How'd you get out?" Kevin asked, backing up from an attack by his golem.

"Trade secret," Devlin answered quickly. He held his tonfa in defense position again, glancing to Gwen and Charmcaster's battle. "Is she going to need help?"

"Nah, better to stand clear and avoid getting fried," Kevin answered. "Now if you two are done yapping, let's finish this thing."

Cannonbolt didn't hesitate, rolling into the golem, then rolling straight up off of it into the sky. Kevin gave Devlin a challenging look, which Devlin returned as they both charged forward, Kevin with his fists and Devlin with his tonfa, both merciless as they attacked. Without needing to coordinate anything, they both backed off at exactly the moment Cannonbolt returned, his body now silver and studded with blunt spikes. The new Cannonbolt pounded down on the golem, creating shockwaves as it slammed the creature into the ground. Devlin stared in amazement as Cannonbolt unrolled, completely unharmed, while the golem's stone body was crushed in several places.

"Welcome to your first Ultimate battle," Kevin said to the shocked Devlin as Ultimate Cannonbolt turned his attention to the other golem, who'd returned for round two.

* * *

Ken studied the monitors tensely, a cup of coffee at his side—black and as strong as he could get it. He didn't plan to sleep until he had the staff and Devlin had the spell, and they both saved their dad.

He cast a glance at the security cam on the medical ward. With the Charm of Reincarnation on Ben, they were able to remove the respirator, but everything was still closely monitoring his condition. If there was any change, they'd all know.

The monitors were focused on every part of the city. The Plumbers and the Galactic Enforcers were searching the outlying areas, but Gwendolyn suggested to Ken that with a limited store of power, Charmcaster would stay close. Without the Archamada, she wouldn't be able to drain anyone again, and she was going to have to play it safe with her extra power. She wouldn't use the staff.

He sighed, looking over at the other monitors and the reports coming in from their allies. He wished he could be sure. Half of this hero business was about trusting your instincts, but Ken's hadn't been so reliable lately. He hadn't listened to Devlin's warning that they shouldn't go into battle. He hadn't listened to his father trying to tell them that Charmcaster was too dangerous.

That was the worst part. He'd _yelled _at him. He'd complained just like when he was ten, insisting that his dad didn't trust him. And who was right in the end and had to pay the price?

For the first time in his life, Ken was entrusted with the protection of the city, the world, the universe, and his father. But now, he would have traded it in a heartbeat to have his father back at the helm. He'd never imagined that the cost would be this high.

* * *

A pure beam of mana met a crackling bolt of magic, exploding from the force. Gwen and Charmcaster leapt back from the energy discharge, and Charmcaster aimed her staff at Gwen, unleashing a blast of magic. Gwen quickly threw up a shield to protect herself.

"You've only got one trick, Charmcaster," Gwen taunted.

"But I'm so good at it," she replied, firing a bolt from her hand.

She put enough force into it that Gwen's shield shattered, sending her flying back. Gwen fell in the wreckage of a fallen building, the Archamada lying at her side. Smirking, Charmcaster came over to her and held her hand at the book, telekinetically lifting it.

"I'll take that," she said.

"No you don't!" shouted a new voice, and Charmcaster found herself blindsided by a cloaked stranger armed with crystal tonfa. He tackled her to the ground then quickly recovered, raising an arm to guard himself as he reached in the back of his belt.

"You don't know who you're messing with," Charmcaster warned.

"You'd be surprised," he answered.

With an angry grunt, she blasted a bolt of magic at him, but to her surprise, he leapt high into the air, as if he could fly, shooting a blaster down at her from above. No matter how she moved, the lasers arced toward her, making escape difficult. When he landed, it wasn't any better. He was faster than any human should be, closing the distance between them quickly, swinging his tonfa with definite intent to kill. Charmcaster quickly brought up her staff to block, but she could feel the force of his blows against the wood. Whatever he was, it wasn't human. He was too strong for that.

Knowing she had no martial arts talent and that this mysterious man would best her easily, she quickly pulled a dirty trick. She pulled back long enough to point her staff at him, unleashing a blast of energy at his body. He flew backwards, coming to a rest some feet away—probably alive, if his abilities so far were any indication.

A disc of energy hit her from behind, and she whirled around to see that Gwen had recovered, once again holding the Archamada. In the distance, Ben and Kevin had defeated one of her golems and were just about through with the second.

"This isn't worth it," Charmcaster spat. "But believe me, I'll be back." Whispering a teleportation spell, she vanished.

The golems died once severed from her magic, so the danger over, Ben and Kevin reverted to normal. Gwen breathed a sigh of relief and sagged; she hadn't been sure she'd hold out much longer.

"Thanks, guys," she said.

"Don't thank us," Ben insisted, thumbing behind them. Gwen looked beyond him with a puzzled face, and Ben and Kevin turned to see no one there.

"He's gone?" Ben asked.

"It figures," Kevin muttered. "Probably didn't want to wait around for us to lock him up again."

"He _did_ save us," Ben insisted. "Maybe we should give him a chance."

"And maybe we can give Aggregor a chance too," Kevin argued. "What is it with you and second chances? Ever heard of 'once burned'?"

Ben glared. "Yeah, and I think if I hadn't decided to ignore it, you and I wouldn't be talking about it right now."

"That's enough, you two," Gwen interrupted. "Will you both grow up?"

Petulantly, Ben pointed at Kevin and said, "He started it!" Kevin immediately smacked him upside the head. "Ow!"

"Your head's soft enough to take it," Kevin replied.

Gwen rolled her eyes. "At least neither of them got the book. Devlin might be telling us the truth, but until we're sure, I think it's safer if I keep it with me all the time."

"Yeah," Ben relented. "That makes sense."

Gwen then smirked over at Kevin. "See? It works better to reason with him than smack him around."

"Fine, so you got him housebroken," Kevin answered while Ben scowled. "Anything else, or can we all go home now?"

Gwen closed her eyes and shrugged. "Even if I could think of anything, I've still got a monster of a teleportation hangover to sleep off. I'm going to bed."

"Okay, I'll take you home," Ben volunteered.

The three walked together to the base's wall, separating only when they reached their cars. Kevin drove off first while Ben took his time. Gwen kept her eyes closed as she got in the passenger seat, leaning against the headrest.

"Hey, Gwen?" Ben asked as he started the car.

"Yeah?" she asked, not opening her eyes.

"Did you notice anything about Devlin? You know, when you captured him?"

"No," she answered, her voice practically a moan. She cracked open an eye, looking at her cousin curiously. "Why?"

Ben hesitated before answering, "He looked really familiar, even with the hood on. When he helped me with the rock monster, I thought he was Kevin at first."

The other eye opened. Ignoring her headache, Gwen asked, "What are you getting at?"

"I think they're related," he said. "It would explain why Devlin hates him so much."

"Ben, if hating Kevin means anything, then you two were brothers six years ago."

"I'm serious, Gwen." And he was; the look in his eyes was unwavering. "That kind of hatred was personal. I think Devlin might be some relative that's only heard of Kevin's past. That's why he was so shocked that we were friends with him."

"Wait," Gwen said, rubbing her temples. Ben was going out on a limb with a theory, she had a migraine, and it was tough to keep everything straight. "You think some complete stranger that broke into my house and tried to steal the Archamada is related to Kevin and hates him for his criminal past?"

Ben shrugged. "We've seen weirder."

"True, but it's really a stretch. I mean, you're basing this on the fact that they look alike. There's got to be a lot of people who look a little like Kevin."

"Devlin looked _exactly _like him. Close enough that I'd think they were brothers."

Now, Gwen hesitated. "You don't think that maybe Kevin has a brother?"

Ben shrugged. "It's possible. We don't know enough about him. But one thing's sure—Kevin didn't know him."

"How are you so sure?"

"You saw how annoyed he was. That was his usual 'enemy I need to beat on' annoyance. Not even 'guy who cut me off in traffic' or 'guy who owes me money.'"

"Right," Gwen agreed. "Too impersonal. But Devlin knows him or at least knows _of_ him."

"Yeah, which is why we can't tell Kevin," Ben answered. "Devlin tried to keep his distance from him and hated having to work with him during the battle. The first chance he had to get away, he took it."

"Kevin would go after him if he knew the truth," Gwen finished. "And we're still not even _sure_ of the truth."

"Right. I think we need to sit on this for a while."

"Good plan," Gwen agreed, resting her head again and closing her eyes. "In the meantime, wake me up when we get there."

* * *

Gwen wasted no time getting up to her bedroom once Ben dropped her off. He'd given her way too much to think about, and right now, she wanted to forget about it long enough to get some sleep. But as she started to change into her pajamas, she realized something was missing from around her neck.

"My locket!" she whispered. She must have lost it during the battle. If so, it was still back at Los Soledad. She could call Ben or Kevin to pick it up for her…

No, it was too long a drive, and they were probably as exhausted as she was by now. She would have to wait for tomorrow and hope for the best.

* * *

Devlin hadn't gone far in his escape—only flying to the roof of another building once nobody was looking at him. He sat there now, the moonlight shining on a pair of tattered, insectoid wings that had sprouted from his back. He'd needed the transformation to dodge Charmcaster's lightning blast, trying his hardest to concentrate on keeping his powers under control while keeping his mind on the fight. In the end, his split focus failed him—Charmcaster had hit him with that blast of magic, and he lost control. Now, try as he might, he couldn't get his wings to conceal themselves.

He could get them to fold down, however, enough to be hidden by a cape. He'd removed his cloak and was tearing the back of it along the middle. It would work to conceal his wings, but if he needed to fly, it wouldn't restrict them either.

His work done, he slipped the cloak on again and sighed. "This is _not_ what I expected at all."

He leapt off the roof, intending to find a place to crash for the night, when he saw a glint of something on their battlefield. Curious, he made his way over to the destroyed building where Charmcaster had thrown Gwen, to see a necklace with a broken chain. It had been abandoned by accident, its owner too dazed to realize she'd lost something.

Devlin's breath caught as he recognized the pendant, and he fished out his own locket to be sure. It was the same design—round, gold, with a ring around a raised center. It was old, probably an antique or a family heirloom.

Devlin held one locket in each hand for a moment, dreading the truth. With a painful intake of breath, he steeled himself and opened it.

**A quick defense before I get started: I have nothing against Elena from **_**Alien Swarm**_**. In fact, I actually like her. However, I can't say that Kevin likes her much, and in any case, he enjoys picking on Ben. "Caroline" is a reference to Charmcaster's alias in "In Charm's Way"; Kevin's still sore about that, and I'm guessing he's trying to make it up to Gwen by slapping the name on a golem he's fighting.**


	7. The Secret of the Locket

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Six: "The Secret of the Locket"

Devlin knew the moment he opened the locket that he wasn't going to like what was inside. Unlike his, this one had a photo in it—a fairly recent one of a young, smiling couple. Fears he didn't realize he'd had were suddenly all confirmed: the couple was Kevin and Gwen. They were together in this strange new world. Somehow or another, they were together and _happy_.

"No," he denied, feeling his world shatter around him.

It was wrong. It had to be. Gwen would never be with someone like Kevin, no matter how much he pretended he'd changed. He was a monster. And how could Ben let it happen? He'd never trust someone he cared about to someone that horrible.

But it explained the way Kevin hadn't left Gwen's side once they found her unconscious. And the smile she'd had for him when she saw him hovering over her. And Ben had been defensive of Kevin and even _expected_ him to have his back in battle…

He squeezed shut Gwen's locket, fighting off tears of anger and pain. Much as he wanted to deny it, it made too much sense. Kevin had inherited the locket from Elizabeth, just as Devlin had. He gave it to Gwen as a gift, and one of the two of them put that picture inside as a keepsake.

The sense of betrayal made him feel sick, and he swayed a little as he tried to cope with the hard truth. He sat down in the sand and held his head in his hands. Everything he'd ever known, everything he'd ever accepted had been turned on its head. His entire worldview had been destroyed, and somehow he had to accept it and move on. It was no wonder Gwendolyn had been so against time travel, if she had the slightest idea of what she'd caused the last time she'd done it. For a moment, Devlin hated her for it, but he forced himself to remember that this timeline had branched off of his own. The people in it weren't necessarily the same people he knew. But saying it and believing it were two very different things.

He took a breath and stood up, tucking the locket in one of his belt pouches. He still had to get the Vivere Spell, and to do that, he had to confront them again.

And hopefully, he would get some answers along the way.

* * *

Ken opened his eyes with a start, realizing he'd dozed off. Groaning, he wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked across the room to his father. Still comatose, still waiting for his sons to save him. There hadn't been any change since Gwendolyn used the Charm on him.

Ken stood up and cracked his back, heading to the kitchen for some breakfast and coffee. He'd been up all night monitoring the computer, chasing every electronic lead. Nothing came of it, and he'd had to reluctantly set the computer to alert him so he could relieve his eyestrain. He hated to admit it to himself, but he'd needed the break. He hadn't been able to come up with a single reason why he couldn't just leave it to the computer and his contacts to let him know when anything came up. He wasn't going to make the situation any easier if he didn't rest once in a while, no matter how hard it was.

He managed to eat some eggs and got himself another large coffee as he headed back to the computer. There were a couple of leads being followed by the Magical Division, and they promised to report back on anything they found. The Plumbers in the field were changing shifts and would pass along all information to the next shift. Nothing else to report.

Ken sighed and rubbed his eyes again before drinking some coffee. He hated this part. It was easier being out there—when you were fighting an enemy, you at least felt like you were contributing. Following trails of breadcrumbs and coordinating search patterns wasn't his idea of useful. He felt completely powerless.

An alarm suddenly went off, and he immediately looked at his father's monitor before realizing it was the activity alert. Magical activity had just been picked up downtown, where the high-end shops were. Bringing up communication channels to his family, he warned, "We might have found Charmcaster downtown. I'm heading there now."

"Be careful," Max warned. "Stay away from her arrays, and keep her from using that staff."

"Got it," Ken answered before transforming to XLR-8 and running off.

* * *

It was still fairly early in the morning, hours before school started and before her parents had to leave for work, so Gwen figured it would be all right if she borrowed her mother's car long enough to check Los Soledad for her locket. Keeping an eye on the time, she scanned the area, trying to track down the traces of her mana left behind on the necklace. Unfortunately, her mana was all over the scene, traces of magic and the use of her energy powers giving her false positives.

"Looking for something?" someone asked, and Gwen turned to see Devlin leaning against a building. Dangling from his hand was the locket.

"Thank you," Gwen said, walking forward. But as she reached to take it from him, he pulled it away. "What are you doing? That's mine—give it back."

"No," he answered, opening the locket momentarily to show it was empty. "This is _my_ locket. _This_ is yours." And from his other hand, he produced an identical one, opening it to reveal the photo of her and Kevin.

Cautiously, Gwen took her locket, scanning for any trace of magic or anything wrong. Devlin watched her suspiciously, and she returned the favor as she asked, "Where did you get that?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he said. "But I think I know the answer to that already. Kevin gave you yours. My grandmother gave me mine."

"Your grandmother?" Gwen whispered in surprise. "Who are you?"

Devlin reached into his pocket, and she immediately went on-guard, taking a step or two back and getting into a defensive stance. He pulled out a small, scarred silver bracelet and tossed it to her. Gwen kept one arm in a blocking position as she caught the bracelet and in the faint light of morning, read the name half-scratched out on the metal: Devlin Levin.

Ben had just warned her that he thought Devlin and Kevin were related. But to have an exact copy of her locket and to say it had come from his _grandmother_, that would have to mean…

Gwen sent out a beam of energy, catching Devlin by surprise as she used the construct to pin him to the side of the building. "Who are you? How did you really get that locket?"

"Devlin Levin Tennyson," he choked out. "My biological father is Kevin Levin."

No, this was crazy. There was no way…

"How am I supposed to believe you?" she cried. "You've already tried to steal from us! You wouldn't tell us anything—how do I know you're not lying?"

There was raw hatred in his eyes, too similar to Kevin when Ragnarok had attacked. "I thought trusting criminals came easy to you guys."

Had it been Ben there, he coldly would have reiterated that Kevin had more than proven himself as a trusted friend, with that terrible, icy patience that always hit when he was too angry to show it. Gwen's temper was more fire than ice. Her eyes glowed, and she caught the look of surprise and fear on Devlin's face seconds before his eyes did the same, and she forced her way into his mind. Almost immediately, she was assailed with a deep sense of guilt and constant images of an older Ben, lying helpless in a hospital bed, hooked up to various machines.

"No," she whispered, releasing Devlin. It was true. It was all true. He _was_ Kevin's son, and he was doing everything he could to help the Ben from his timeline.

Without meaning to, she looked at him with more scrutiny. Black hair, a little spiky, and long, tied back in a ponytail. Blue eyes, but a familiar face. There was no denying the resemblance now.

She couldn't help but feel a pain in her heart when she couldn't seem to find any trace of herself in there.

Once Devlin recovered from the shock and the memory, she looked up at him and asked, "What happened to Ben?"

"Exactly what I told you," he answered. "In my timeline, Charmcaster cast the Mori Spell on him, draining his lifeforce. I stopped it, but I destroyed the counterspell too."

Gwen felt shaky, though whether it was from the answers or the questions she now had, she wasn't sure. "You said your dad…"

"He is," Devlin affirmed. "Ben adopted me when I was eleven. He's been my dad for about half my life."

Devlin had hated Kevin the moment he realized who he was. He still hated him. Though she wasn't sure she wanted confirmation, Gwen asked, "Kevin never joined us, did he?"

Devlin shook his head, his eyes closed. "No. He spent most of my childhood in the Null Void. That's how I ended up with Ben anyway—Kevin told me to release him, and I'd had to fight my way in. I never imagined that Kevin wouldn't want me, or that Ben would forgive me for everything that happened."

"That's Ben for you," Gwen agreed, taking comfort from the one thing that seemed to be the same between timelines. But there was one thing she had to know, and she reluctantly asked, "What about your mother?"

"Don't ask," Devlin insisted. "Let's just say that I never had the courage to ask her what she did for a living, but it meant I stayed home alone a lot at night and had to pretend nobody was home. Social services caught up with me when I was about ten, but by then, Mom was dead and Dad in was in the Null Void. I figure she probably met him through work, but again, I didn't want to know."

"Yeah," she answered, nodding. Already, she was beginning to get a sense of how hard it had been for him, and she couldn't help but feel for him. "But Kevin—our Kevin—is different from the one you knew."

"I'm trying to tell myself that," Devlin answered. "You and Ben are different enough that I can almost start to believe it, but the memories are still there."

"How different?" Gwen asked, clutching the locket.

"Your powers, for one," he said. "I've never seen anything like that Ultimate Cannonbolt before, and Aunt Gwendolyn's powers were blue, not pink."

She smiled. "My powers changed a few years ago, thanks to my alien heritage. I guess she never learned to draw on that power."

"Or she never knew," he replied. "I've never heard anything about her and Kevin either." Gwen nodded. She'd guessed that would be the case. "Ben, the rest of the family he gave me—they've done a lot to try to help me. I can't let him down when he needs it the most. That's why I have to have the Vivere Spell, and I need to make sure the Charmcaster here never gets the Mori Spell."

Gwen hesitated. She had the book, and after being in his mind, she trusted him more, but there was still the team to think about. Ben wanted to trust him, and Kevin didn't at all.

"I have to talk to Ben and Kevin first," she said. "I need to convince them that you're worth trusting."

"You can't tell them about me," he pleaded.

"I won't," she promised. "But I do need to get them to trust you. And you're going to too."

Devlin hardly looked convinced that he could, and Gwen saw in that moment the influence of both of his fathers on him. He resembled Kevin, and to some extent, the reluctance was similar to the self-esteem issues he tried desperately to hide. But at the same time, there was a core of strength and a drive to commit himself to even the most hopeless of causes that was Ben through and through.

Timelines and worlds apart, Devlin was still family, and Gwen slowly gave him a light hug. He stiffened from the sudden physical contact; his family had always treaded lightly around him when it came to contact, never sure of how deep the scars of abuse ran, and he'd tried the past ten years never to let on. But those ten years had taught him he was safe and they would never try to hurt him. He just had to trust that this timeline's variants of them wouldn't either. Gwen had taken the first step, and now it was his turn. Hesitantly, he hugged her back.

When they let go, it was clear that Gwen was fighting back tears. She wiped her eyes and said, "I need to run to school now. But I'll tell Ben and Kevin to meet with you, so you can tell them as much as you need to."

"Okay," he answered, nodding. "Good luck."

"You too," she said, heading back to the car and driving off.

She managed to get back home before her parents needed to leave, giving her enough time to put away her broken necklace and grab her things for school. But as she made her way to school, she ran into Ben and Julie walking the opposite way toward the public school.

"Hi, Gwen," Julie greeted.

"Hey, what's…" Ben was interrupted suddenly by his cousin grabbing him in a hug and burying her face in his shoulder. He traded looks of alarm with Julie before asking, "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Nothing," Gwen answered when she pulled away. She wiped her eyes and said. "I'm just glad you're okay."

Ben was obviously confused, and he just answered, "Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

Julie gave Gwen a concerned look and asked, "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," Gwen insisted, sniffing slightly as she dried her eyes. "I just ran into Devlin earlier."

Immediately, Ben's expression went hard, and Julie could almost feel the temperature drop a few degrees around him. Seriously, he asked, "Did he do anything?"

"No," Gwen said. "No, it's okay. He told me everything, and…"

Ben's expression softened, waiting for her judgment. "And?"

"I believe him," she affirmed. "I'd explain if I could, but just trust me on this."

"Of course I trust you," Ben insisted, and Julie offered a reassuring smile. "But did you find anything out about him and Kevin?"

She knew that question would come up. Now that she thought about it, it made perfect sense that Ben would jump to the conclusion that Kevin and Devlin were brothers. It made a lot more sense than the fact that they were father and son.

"No," she lied. "But I don't think they're brothers."

"Okay," Ben answered. Wryly, he added, "I guess it's a good thing we didn't tell Kevin then, huh?"

Gwen laughed a little, feeling immensely better just from her cousin's dumb sense of humor. "Yeah. Anyway, I'll see you after school. Bye, guys."

"Bye, Gwen," Julie said.

They waved as Gwen walked away, and once they thought she was out of earshot, Julie asked, "What was all that about?"

"I don't know," he said. "That was weird. Even for us."

Gwen heard his comments and couldn't help but smile. There was comfort in the familiar, and Ben's reaction reminded her just how "okay" he really was.

It also meant that she had to do whatever she could to help Devlin save the Ben from his timeline, no matter how similar or different they were.

* * *

Ken was far from the first to arrive on the scene. Halfway there, he got a call from Carson, leader of one of the teams from the Magical Division. They and a few non-magical Plumbers were engaging Charmcaster, though keeping their distance. When he got there, he saw Charmcaster shielding herself from laser blasts and magical attacks, though she didn't use her staff for counterattacks.

"Carson," XLR-8 called, and the mage looked over at him. Despite his magic, he was armed with a pair of blasters. "I need to get close."

Trusting him to signal everyone not to shoot, Ken rushed forward, catching Charmcaster off-guard as he ran in a tight circle around her. A tornado formed around her, lifting her off the ground, and there, the mages and Plumbers opened fire again.

"Dispedia," Charmcaster announced, and suddenly a surge of energy burst forth, counteracting the wind and sending XLR-8 flying back. When she saw just who had attacked her, she smirked. "So, little brother comes back for round two. What's wrong? Big brother too torn up to fight?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Ken challenged, changing to Upchuck. "Carson!"

"On it!" the mage answered, combining his blasters. A single, more powerful laser shot forth, and Upchuck swallowed it immediately. Charmcaster followed the action, too surprised to move, and she was hit when Upchuck regurgitated the blast at her. She flew back, going right through a window.

"I think that…" Carson started, but broken glass flew back at them, forcing him to raise a blue-green forcefield. "Never mind!"

Charmcaster leapt out of the storefront, wielding her staff. Ken and Carson froze, not wanting to force her to use it. A cruel smile formed on her face at the sight of the two men freezing in place.

"You're afraid I'm going to use this," she noticed. "Use up all the precious energy inside. Well, since your brother destroyed my book, I'm not exactly willing to use up all the power I've got right now on a couple of second-rate cops." Carson bristled slightly, ready to object, but Charmcaster said, "But I can't have you interfering either, so it looks like I'll have to do something." The staff glowed, and Ken and Carson fired on her, trying to knock it from her grasp before she could use the power. But the energy and lasers bounced away from her, and she shouted, "Awalketello follicget!"

Ornamental trees and even potted plants suddenly came to life, bursting free from the earth and attacking the forces assembled. Laughing, Charmcaster opened another fold in space and escaped, while Ken struggled with unusually tough morning glory vines. He switched to Wildvine, allowing him to merge with the plant and tame it again. As other mages and aliens began to free themselves from the other plants, Wildvine moved to help Carson out of a particularly thorny rosebush.

"Thanks," Carson answered as Ken freed him, then reverted to human form. "I think that's why I don't garden. Well, other than the fact that I don't have a green thumb. Well, I know my magic _is _kind of green—more of a blue-green then, maybe a teal?"

"Carson," Ken called, trying to get the mage to focus. "Can you scan for Charmcaster's magical signature?"

"Right."

A blue-green glow formed around Carson's hand as he waved it over the spot where Charmcaster had opened her fold. There was a ripple in the air, and a tear of energy appeared in light pink for a moment before fading.

"Got it," he answered. "She's heading for town center. With everyone else circling the city, she's got nowhere to go but in."

"On my way," Ken answered, switching back to XLR-8 and dashing off.

**This chapter's title comes from the **_**Power Rangers in Space**_** classic by the same name, the source inspiration for this subplot. There was also inspiration borrowed from the **_**Power Rangers RPM**_** episode "Key to the Past" (which had also homaged the earlier episode).**_** Power Rangers**_** fans may also recognize another homage in Carson, directly ripped from Bridge Carson of **_**SPD**_** (Green Ranger, then Blue, then Red). As before, Charmcaster's spells are ripped from the series (found on the Ben 10 Encyclopedia), though I did some guesswork on Dispedia. Devlin's story about his mother is based on the only explanation I can come up with for why his mother would have been with his father, and how Devlin would have known his father for even part of his life (as indicated when he said Kevin spent "most" of Devlin's childhood in the Null Void). I also wanted to emphasize that in the "Ken 10" universe, it's highly unlikely that Gwen would have been Devlin's mother; **_**Alien Force**_**, for all it sped into the crush between them, was sure not to have them officially hook up until Kevin was clearly on the light side. Gwen's a very headstrong girl, and it would be very unlike her to "give in" to a still-evil Kevin, have a child, **_**abandon**_** that child, and not say anything to her family about it.**


	8. In My Hour of Darkness

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Seven: "In My Hour of Darkness"

Just because he had to wait for Gwen to pass along the message that he wanted to meet with everybody, it didn't mean that Devlin had to wait around in Los Soledad all day. Flying was difficult in broad daylight, so he made sure to frequently stop on rooftops and in trees, keeping out of sight.

Something caught his attention, and he looked down to see Ben with a girl who definitely wasn't his ex-wife, both of them being hassled by a pair of reporters. Devlin glared. Some things never changed. He had no love for the profession; the press had given him a hard time all throughout his teenage years, second-guessing Ben's trust in him and criticizing his every move as they waited for him to follow in his more infamous father's footsteps.

This might help Ben's opinion of him, and it also gave him a little fun in the meantime. He reached for a flash grenade and tried to get Ben's attention.

Ben, in the meantime, had known there was trouble the moment the white car stopped in front of him and a woman with a tape recorder and a younger man with a camera came out. It was worse when Julie had groaned.

"Oh no," she murmured. "They're from ORE Journal—the local Japanese paper. My dad reads it all the time."

"Bad as Will Harangue?" Ben whispered.

"No one's _that_ bad," Julie answered. "But Reiko Momoi never lets a story go."

Ben kept that in mind as Momoi politely introduced herself and her intern, whom she called Shinji, enthusiastically greeted him and started taking pictures.

"What do you have to say about your recent battle with Captain Nemesis?" Momoi asked, nonplussed by Shinji's eager photography.

"Uh," Ben started, blinking as a light shone in his eyes. "I'm not sure I should talk about that…"

"Captain Nemesis challenged you repeatedly on-camera," Momoi said. "Do you feel this rivalry was sudden, or was it building over the course of your short partnership?"

"Um…"

"He just said no comment," Julie answered, giving Momoi a flat glare.

"Of course," Momoi replied politely.

"Oh, Ben!" Shinji said, as if he'd suddenly remembered something. "You were dating Jennifer Nocturne, right? Did she break up with you after Captain Nemesis's defeat?"

As far as reporters went, Momoi seemed to be one of the better ones, even if she was steadily getting on Julie's nerves. She was stubborn about the story, but she at least treated Ben with respect. Shinji, on the other hand, may have seemed like a nice guy, but a comment like that definitely said he was not reporter material. Julie was even angrier now, and even as Momoi chastised her intern, she looked like she was going to give a few words of her own…

That bright light was shining in his eyes again, and he looked over to see where it was coming from. To his surprise, he saw Devlin standing on a nearby rooftop, holding some kind of capsule that was producing light. He waved at Ben, then motioned for him to cover his eyes.

While he wasn't sure just what Devlin was about to pull, Ben knew a warning when he saw one. He grabbed Julie's hand, and as she looked at him in surprise, he made sure to close his eyes and turn his face away. Recognizing the warning, she did the same.

Momoi and Shinji watched in surprise, suspecting something, but before they could do anything, Devlin dropped the flash grenade right between the reporters and teens. The sudden burst of light temporarily blinded the reporters, giving Ben and Julie the chance to run. Devlin followed their escape, dropping more flash grenades behind them to make it difficult for the reporters to take chase.

"Thanks," Ben said once the three of them got to the high school. "They ambushed us on the way to school. We were going to be late."

"No problem," Devlin answered, taking notice of Julie and how she and Ben hadn't let go of each other's hands.

A bell rang, and Julie looked over. "We'd better get to class."

Ben followed her gaze. "Yeah. Thanks again." He turned back to look for Devlin, but no one was there. He blinked in surprise, but Julie pulled his hand.

"Later," she insisted. "We're going to be late!"

Ben nodded and followed her inside. Gwen had put in her vote of confidence in Devlin, and a little thing like this made Ben feel better about wanting to trust him too.

But before he could even begin to worry about the mysterious stranger, he had to get through first period.

* * *

Ken came to a halt before the statue of his father. All was quiet; he'd beat Charmcaster there. Taking advantage of the calm before the storm, he looked up at the statue—a monument he hoped wouldn't become a memorial. It had been built some decades ago, when Ben made a name for himself saving the universe. Ten years ago, it had served as a meeting place for Ken and Devlin when everything had first started.

Time had weathered the statue. Some features were no longer as sharp as they used to be, as stone details had worn down from the wind and rain. Ken's eyes drifted to the dedication: Hero of Heroes. For the first time, it hit him. There were a lot more people than just his father counting on him. His brother, his aunt, his great-grandfather, the rest of his family—the whole city, planet, galaxy, and universe were depending on him to do this. To him and Devlin, Ben was their father. To the people they'd never even met, he was a symbol, a legend that could not be lost now.

There was the sound of magic crackling, like electricity. Ken spun around and stood with the statue at his back, in ready position.

"You again," Charmcaster noticed as she emerged from the portal. "I see you don't have your bodyguards with you this time."

Ken bristled at the taunt, but rather than respond to it, he zoomed forward, trying to rip the staff from her hands. Instead, Charmcaster brought it up quickly, drawing on just enough power that she could give him a solid whack that sent him crashing into a neighboring building.

"Isn't this ironic?" she taunted as he picked himself up. "Your daddy's power defeating you. Just proves that you were never good enough."

The remark cut deeply, and Ken wanted to make her pay. But he'd already learned the hard way not to let his temper get the better of him. Thinking quickly, he switched to Arcticguana and froze her body solid, though leaving her hands and the staff free. He bounded forward and shifted to Grey Matter so he could scramble up the ice and try to pry the staff from her cold fingers. He'd just begun to get it free when Charmcaster's hands began to glow, and he felt intense pain from magic coursing through his small form. He held on tightly to the staff as Charmcaster shattered the ice, but she swung it violently, throwing him off. He crashed into the base of the statue, reverting to human form.

It was only there, dazed and sore as he looked up at the statue, that he realized just why his father had always been so hard on him. Ben hadn't become the Hero of Heroes just by having the Omnitrix; he'd had to _prove_ his worth to the entire universe. It had taken time and heartache for him to master its power, and here Ken expected everything to be given to him. He hadn't had to earn the right to wear the Omnitrix; his dad had _given _it to him, after a good deal of reluctance. Ken had mastered nothing, and Ben had been trying to teach him that.

"Appropriate," Charmcaster said as she came toward him, aiming her staff. "One more Tennyson down, as he lies helpless at Daddy's feet."

Maybe he wasn't ready. But at the very least, he was going to master himself. As energy pooled into the mouth of the staff, Ken got to his feet for his last stand.

* * *

Gwen got the message to Ben and Kevin after school, and they met Devlin behind the local hotbed of weirdness, Mr. Smoothy. Ben was sipping a drink as Devlin gave the abridged version of his tale, leaving out the details about him being from an alternate future and about his family. Though he didn't look it, Ben was listening carefully, still willing to trust Devlin, particularly after seeing he how he'd helped him and Julie escape the reporters without a confrontation. Kevin, however, was leaning back against the picnic table, his arms crossed.

"So you screw up and nearly get your dad killed," Kevin said. "How is that our problem again?"

"Kevin," Gwen said, giving him a warning glare. As he backed off, she pulled out the Archamada from her backpack. "I looked in here and sure enough, there_ is_ a spell by that name. And the description is just as bad as Devlin makes it sound."

"Wait," Ben interrupted, setting down his smoothie. "If it's in the Archamada, how did Devlin's dad get trapped by it? You've had the book this whole time, Gwen."

Devlin fought not to reveal his sense of dread. Ben might have seemed like he wasn't too bright half the time, but the other half, he was uncomfortably sharp. He didn't want to think about what else Ben might figure out if he was stuck here too long.

"There's probably another record of the spell," Gwen answered easily. "I don't know half the spells in here, much less where they came from."

Whew. That had been a close one. Believing the lie, Ben just nodded, looking at the book in Gwen's hand. He looked uneasy as he read the effects. "This is pretty bad. You said you only needed the counterspell?"

"Yes," Devlin answered. "Go ahead and destroy the original, I don't care. I just need the cure."

Ben looked over at Kevin. "Sounds harmless enough. And I really don't want another copy of the original here."

"Fine," Kevin replied. "But I'm telling you, if this backfires on us again, don't say I didn't tell you so."

Still, it settled the matter. Gwen folded the page to make it easier to tear, then began to rip it from the binding. But as she was halfway through, the Mori Spell was ripped from her hands, sailing across the lot to Charmcaster, who smugly plucked it from the air.

"I knew if I tailed you three long enough, one of you would lead me to the Archamada," she said. "I just didn't think you'd lead me to so useful a spell."

All four were ready to fight, Devlin reaching for his blaster, Kevin absorbing the metal of the table, Gwen's hands glowing with energy, and Ben with his hand on the Ultimatrix.

"Careful," Devlin warned. "You don't want to get caught by it."

"Kinda figured that," Kevin answered, charging.

"Wait!" Devlin shouted.

Kevin didn't hear him. Covered from head to toe in steel, he morphed an arm into a blade and slashed at Charmcaster, who dodged his attacks. Like a starting pistol, it made everyone else spring into action. Gwen began unleashing energy discs while Devlin fired his blaster, the runes on it making his lasers twist to avoid Kevin as they went for Charmcaster. Ben brought up a form on the Ultimatrix and slammed down the dial.

"Big Chill!" he called as he flew to assist Kevin, phasing through Charmcaster as he tried to freeze her. He just missed her, only getting her arm, freezing her hand to her staff. She shouted in pain before turning her staff on Big Chill, blasting at him. The beam missed, fazing through him as he went intangible, and she left herself open to Kevin's next attack. A hand morphed into a mallet hit her, sending her reeling back.

"Enough!" she growled, generating energy around her hand to free it. She aimed her staff at Kevin. "I'd love to get Gwen out of the way first, but you're too much of a pest for your own good!"

A circle of pink energy began to form underneath him, and everyone began to move. Ben swooped down to pull him out of there, and Gwen tried to form a bubble around him, but Devlin was the fastest. Without even thinking of the consequences, he ran at full speed, shoving Kevin out of the way of the array. The magic closed itself before he could escape himself.

He could feel everyone's eyes on him in shock. Gwen gasped, her hands over her mouth in horror. Ben floated overhead, stunned and helpless to stop it. Kevin had rolled to a stop and looked over at him, not in any way having expected the sacrifice. And Charmcaster, who had been surprised by his speed, gave him a look of confusion before she slammed her staff on the ground.

"Not who I was aiming for, but you'll do just fine," she said.

"Stop her!" Gwen shouted.

Ben and Kevin charged, and Gwen blasted energy, but Charmcaster raised a hand, erecting a forcefield around the whole area. Kevin pounded against it and Big Chill tried to faze through, but nothing could get past it.

"I'll have enough energy to make up for this little spell after this is over," Charmcaster boasted, holding up the Mori Spell. "Ars longa, vita brevis. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Beati possidentes. Memento mori!"

It was just as bad to go through as the evidence had indicated. Sharp pain went through Devlin's body, forcing him to scream as he tried to thrash against it. But immobilized, any attempt to escape just made the pain worse. His life energy appeared around him in a shifting white aura, connecting him to the staff. It hurt like nothing else in the world. But he could remember how his father had just stared Charmcaster down. If Devlin was going to die, he would at least do the same as Ben and go down with dignity.

The last of the energy entered the staff, and Charmcaster let both the forcefield and the array drop. Devlin's body fell to the ground, and Charmcaster smirked at Gwen before raising her glowing staff and firing at her. Gwen quickly threw up a shield, but the energy shattered it easily, sending her flying back.

Kevin charged again, but Charmcaster blasted him back before taking to the skies, where Big Chill soared and dove to avoid her blasts. As Gwen pulled herself up and grabbed the Archamada, Kevin ran over to Devlin, checking his pulse. She knew it before he did; she couldn't feel a trace of mana left.

"He's gone," he said softly as Gwen approached.

"Maybe not," Gwen said with conviction. She looked down at the Vivere Spell, then at Devlin. "Keep his heart pumping. I've got an idea."

Kevin didn't ask, instead compressing Devlin's chest repeatedly to keep blood flowing to his brain. Gwen looked up in the sky where Big Chill and Charmcaster were fighting and shouted, "Ben! Keep her from using that staff!"

"Easier said than done," he replied, grappling with Charmcaster for the staff. She threw him off, and he reached for the Ultimatrix symbol on his chest. "Hmm, or maybe it _is_ easier."

The symbol transformed at his touch, and green light spread throughout his body. Gradually, his form became red, with patterns like flames forming over his eyes and on the edges of his wings. With a cry of "Ultimate Big Chill!" he flew toward her again, blasting icy flames.

Gwen looked down at the counterspell as Ben kept a sheet of ice on the staff, freezing it in Charmcaster's hands. Ultimate Big Chill was strong enough to keep her busy for a while. Seeing that Kevin was still doing compressions on Devlin's chest, Gwen began to read:

"Fortis cadere, cedere non potest."

Within the ice, the staff began to glow again.

"What are you doing?" Charmcaster demanded.

"Ex tenebris lux."

A faint glow formed around Devlin's body. It surprised Kevin, but he didn't stop the compressions.

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit."

Energy flowed from the staff in a sudden rush, aiming for Devlin.

"No!" Charmcaster shouted.

She swung the ice-covered staff, catching Ben completely by surprise. A jagged bit of ice caught his side, drawing blood. It dripped across the battlefield as he flew after her, breathing frozen fire to keep her from attacking Gwen and interrupting the counterspell. He flew down rapidly, fazing through her legs as she swooped closer. Her legs froze, and the sudden weight was more than the fading power could take. She hit the ground, ice exploding everywhere as the last of the energy flowed back to Devlin.

"Memento vivere."

Devlin drew a sudden breath, startling Kevin, who backed up slightly. Shaking, Devlin opened his eyes, giving Kevin a surprised look before feeling a drop of something hit his sleeve. He glanced up to see Ultimate Big Chill, who landed beside him.

"Sorry," he said, holding a cut on his side. "Good to see you're okay."

"It worked!" Gwen cheered, closing the book as Kevin tried to help a trembling Devlin to his feet.

Ultimate Big Chill peered behind himself and saw Charmcaster beginning to recover. "She won't be out long. Kevin, get him to safety. Gwen and I'll take care of this."

Kevin didn't argue, instead putting Devlin's arm around his neck. "Come on."

"Just a second," Gwen said, placing the Archamada in Devlin's other arm, making him cradle it close. He looked at her weakly before she ordered both of them, "Now, go."

He managed to nod before Kevin led him off. Before the first blast of magic could come after them, Ben and Gwen turned to face Charmcaster, ready for anything.

**This title comes from a line in the Beatles song "Let It Be": "And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me / Speaking words of wisdom, let it be." Reiko Momoi, Shinji, and ORE Journal are from **_**Kamen Rider Ryuki**_**, since I figured I might as well have a **_**Kamen Rider**_** cameo to go along with the **_**Power Rangers **_**one from the last chapter. The Vivere Spell is once again strung from Latin phrases I got from Wikipedia: "Fortis cadere, cedere potest," ("The brave may fall, but cannot yield"), "ex tenebris lux," ("from darkness, light"), "omnia mutantur, nihil interit," ("everything changes, nothing perishes"), and "memento vivere" ("a reminder of life"/"remember to live"—the opposite of "memento mori").**


	9. The Movement You Need

The Theory of Everything  
Chapter Eight: "The Movement You Need"

The irony didn't escape Devlin, as Kevin helped him through the backstreets of town. He had a feeling Kevin appreciated at least some of it. Neither was fond of the other, and Devlin had a long memory of the trauma his timeline's Kevin had caused. But right now, their lives were bound. Devlin had saved Kevin—never intending to win him over or anything; he hadn't had time to consider that. He'd done it out of instinct, because he knew he couldn't let anyone go through that again. And in turn, Kevin was committing himself to help Devlin.

They managed to reach a narrow alleyway, and Kevin set Devlin down in the shadow of the buildings. Devlin winced as pain shot through his body from the sudden movement, but he knew it wasn't as bad as it could have been. He'd already been through the worst.

"They're going to need your help," he warned.

"Yeah, well, you need it first," Kevin answered.

Devlin shook his head. "I'm alive, I'll be fine from here. It's them I'm worried about."

"Listen to yourself," Kevin argued. "You just came back from the dead, and you say you're not the one I should be worrying about?"

"Please," Devlin insisted. While weak, he managed to slide out one of his tonfa, and he held it up to Kevin. For a moment, their eyes met, and it was almost like they understood each other. At the very least, they could see that they had the same goal. "Make sure they're okay."

"Okay," Kevin replied, putting a hand on the tonfa and absorbing the tough crystal. "But we're coming back for you as soon as we beat Charmcaster. Don't lose that book until then, got it?"

Devlin managed a pained grin as Kevin ran off. Once he was sure Kevin had gotten far enough away, he pushed himself up with all his strength and staggered back down the alley before spreading his wings and taking flight.

* * *

Ken slid easily into a fighting stance, and Charmcaster laughed.

"You're really going to face me as a human?" she asked. "You must be even dumber than I thought. But at least this will be easy."

She aimed her staff, and Ken moved, ducking under the blast and rolling forward. He landed in a low crouch, then jumped up, aiming a bicycle kick at Charmcaster's hand. His foot connected solidly with her knuckles, and she drew back her hand in pain before angrily whipping the staff toward him. Before she could fire, however, he kicked her feet out from underneath her. She fell backwards, and Ken moved in to tackle her, grappling for the staff. She struggled with him, her hands glowing with magic, but as he saw her beginning to mouth the words of a spell, he thrust the staff down toward her, forcing her to smack her head against the street. She cried out in pain, losing her grip momentarily, and Ken pulled the staff free and made a break for it.

"You won't get away with this," she growled, as she got up. "Benta morta marta!"

Beams of fire started racing after Ken, and he quickly tapped the comm in his ear as he felt the searing heat catch up to him.

"I've got the staff! Port me out!"

Golden lines of magic from the Charms of Bezel traced a portal some feet in front of him. Ken sprinted across and leapt into it, just as the fire streams converged, exploding. When the fire cleared, there was nothing in the middle of it, and Charmcaster shrieked in fury.

* * *

Charmcaster blasted magic from her hands and the staff at the same time, causing chips of ice to fly everywhere before the lightest snow particles fluttered down. Ultimate Big Chill and Gwen settled into attack stances as they watched her free her legs and pick up a soggy piece of paper. Ink had smeared all over the page, obscuring the words.

"The spell!" she realized. "It's ruined!"

"Good for us," Gwen quipped.

"You'll pay for this!" Charmcaster vowed, aiming a bolt of magic at them.

Gwen created a shield while Ultimate Big Chill flew into the air to avoid it. Gliding over Charmcaster, he asked, "Cash or credit?"

Enraged, Charmcaster blasted magic at him, but he was able to freeze the beam solid. It crashed to the ground, exploding into light and snow. As Charmcaster prepared her next attack, Gwen grabbed her from behind with an energy construct, and Charmcaster struggled within it while Ultimate Big Chill breathed ice flames all around her.

"Enough!" she cried, releasing furious blasts of magic from her hands.

The energy construct shattered, pieces of glass-like energy flying out before vanishing, while Gwen was thrown back from the explosion. Ben looked toward his cousin to be sure she was okay, and it left him open to attack as Charmcaster put her hands together and released magic at him. He shouted in pain and started to fall out of the sky, but a fierce and familiar battle cry sounded. He looked over to see Kevin running over, encased in purple crystal and one of his hands transformed into a mace. Charmcaster had to stop blasting Ben in order to escape the vicious swing Kevin made.

"Kevin?" Ultimate Big Chill asked in surprise.

"What happened to Devlin?" Gwen added.

"He told me to go," Kevin answered. "Said he'd be okay."

There was an annoyingly smug tone to Ultimate Big Chill's voice as he asked, "And you trusted him?"

Kevin smirked. "Quiet, Tennyson."

He came in swinging at Charmcaster again, and she aimed a blast of magic at him. Ultimate Big Chill immediately breathed his frozen flames at her hands, preventing her from attacking before Kevin could. She had to move quickly to avoid him, but she backed up straight into one of Gwen's energy constructs. A wall curved around her, limiting her escape routes, as all three slowly walked over to her.

"It's over, Charmcaster," Gwen insisted, maintaining the construct with one hand while the other was glowing with mana.

"Maybe this time," Charmcaster replied, "but I promise, next time we meet, you'll all pay."

She blasted her hands free of the ice and raised the staff into the air, creating a portal. Like a vacuum, it began pulling everything toward it, and Gwen had to trade out her wall for a forcefield to keep them from being sucked in. Charmcaster smirked at them as she flew up through the portal and vanished.

The crystal practically melted off of Kevin's body as he released it, and two green flashes from the Ultimatrix gradually reverted Ben to human form. He clutched his injured side for a moment before waving off his worried friends.

"We need to check on Devlin," he insisted.

"He's this way," Kevin said.

He led them down to the alley where he'd last seen Devlin, only to see it was empty. Ben blinked in surprise while Gwen ventured farther into the alleyway, looking for clues.

"Great," Kevin growled. "He pulled another vanishing act. And this time _with _the book!"

"At least Charmcaster doesn't have it," Ben pointed out.

"Nope," Gwen answered, smiling as she picked up the Archamada. She opened it and found a torn page. Smirking, she held it up to the boys. "Looks like we could trust him after all."

Ben grinned in response. Kevin scowled, but they could tell he wasn't as angry as he pretended to be. He was having a hard time hiding the slightest hint of a smile.

"All right, let's go," Kevin said, walking back out of the alley.

Ben followed, but Gwen held back for a moment, taking another look at the Archamada. It looked like there were two pages missing instead of just one. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a small silver bracelet, and she ran her mana over it, feeling for a trace.

"Come _on_, Gwen!" Ben called.

"Coming!" Gwen replied, stuffing the bracelet back into her purse.

* * *

Devlin had found a forested area not too far away, and he practically collapsed the moment he reached it. He lay down on the ground and fell asleep immediately.

Someone gently shook him awake, and he opened his eyes to see it was near sunset. He sat up as Gwen raised an eyebrow momentarily at the sight of his wings.

"Unstable biofield," he explained. "Long story."

"I'll bet," she replied. "Feeling any better?"

"Yeah," he said. "How did you find me?" She held up his bracelet with a smile, and with a half-smile of his own, he took it back. "Should have figured."

"I noticed two pages were missing from the Archamada," she said as they stood up. "Not just the Vivere Spell."

Devlin nodded and reached in the back of his belt, pulling out the half of the page containing the Vivere Spell and the page for the Astra Spell. Handing it to her, he explained, "This is the spell Aunt Gwendolyn used to send me here. It only survived because she stole it from our copy when Hex tried to use it."

"This can't stay in our world," she realized.

"I'd feel better if you destroyed it," he replied.

"Of course," she answered. Starting to look over the description, she said, "I think I should be able to send you back to just the time you need to be. I can set the target as your aunt's magic."

"Magic calls to magic," Devlin remembered. "Are you sure you know what it'll feel like? Her magic's pretty different from yours."

Gwen grinned. "I think I can recognize it."

She stood back, and Devlin made sure he had everything before she started reading. He realized suddenly that he wasn't surprised she didn't need an array; without even knowing about the difference between magic styles, he recognized that Gwen was naturally able to tap into ambient magic.

The branches of the trees began to move without wind. Wisps of pinkish energy circled around Devlin and Gwen. But this time, Devlin was not afraid.

"Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. Nec spe, nec petu. In omnia paratus. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. Sic itur ad astra."

There were no stars or flames this time, simply wind shot through with streaks of pink light. Before everything vanished, Devlin offered a grin to Gwen, and she smiled back, waving goodbye.

The whirlwind returned him to the medical ward, just as a portal appeared and deposited Ken, who was carrying Charmcaster's staff. They stared at each other in confusion for a moment before Gwendolyn said, "You've got the staff—where's the spell?"

"Right here," Devlin answered, producing the Vivere Spell. At the same time, Ken handed over the staff.

"It's carrying all the energy," he explained to his brother's questioning look.

"Stand back," Gwendolyn ordered, pulling out a vial of powder.

They stood farther back as Gwendolyn spread the powder in a semicircle, closing herself and Ben in. Light shimmered as the ward closed, creating a veil of blue magic. Gently, she lifted the Charm of Reincarnation from Ben's chest and placed it back on her sleeve before placing the staff firmly and reciting the spell:

"Fortis cadere, cedere non potest. Ex tenebris lux. Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. Memento vivere."

The staff glowed brightly, bright enough that Ken and Devlin had to shield their eyes. Ben's body began to glow too, faintly at first, until the energy flowed from the staff back into his body. When it had all returned, the glow faded, and Ben drew a sudden, shaky breath.

"Dad?" Ken asked, his voice still carrying fear.

"That's normal," Devlin assured, and Ken gave him a look of surprise.

Gwendolyn kicked away some of the powder, dispelling the ward. Ben opened his eyes as his sons got closer, grinning to see he was okay.

"That was a close one," Gwendolyn warned.

Ben nodded, barely strong enough to speak. Still, he forced himself to say, "Charmcaster's still out there."

"Don't worry, we can take her," Ken insisted.

"Ken…" Ben protested, but Devlin put a hand on his shoulder.

"We've got it," he promised. "You rest, okay?"

Ben glanced at the hand on his shoulder, then at his sons. With a slight smile, he nodded. "Go."

Ken and Devlin raced out of the medical ward, and Ken noticed the wings poking out of Devlin's cloak.

"Hold up," he called, grabbing Devlin's arm. To his surprise, the Omnitrix began to flash yellow. "What? Collect mode?"

"That's right," Devlin remembered. "Ben was bleeding on me."

"What?" Ken asked.

"Scan it," Devlin said. "I think this guy might come in handy." With a faint smile, he added, "Call it an anniversary present from our dad."

"All right," Ken said, giving him a raised eyebrow. Once the DNA collection was complete, Ultimate Big Chill appeared on the watch. "But you've got a lot to explain when we're done."

Devlin grinned. "Race you there."

Before Ken even had the chance to activate the Omnitrix, Devlin took off, flying for Charmcaster's location. He found her still in the middle of the city, firing off blasts of magic in anger. From above, Devlin began firing his blaster, and the shots hit her from behind. She whipped around as he landed, aiming at her.

"I guess you found your fighting spirit again," she sneered.

"You could say that," Devlin answered, firing.

She brought up a glowing hand, releasing a bit of magic to block the laser. He took flight again, tossing down fire-bombs on her, which she quickly deflected with a magic barrier. He circled around and swooped down, his tonfa in attack position. She just missed his first swipe and caught his tonfa the second time, her hands glowing as she drew on magic to meet his inhuman strength.

"You might be strong, but you're no match for me," she insisted, throwing him back. He flipped backwards in the air before landing, switching to guard position.

"That's your problem, Charmcaster," he said. "You always underestimate us."

Fire rained down from above, but to Charmcaster's shock, it drew the heat from the ground, creating a slick patch of ice. Devlin sped forward, using his wings to keep his balance as he rammed her. A wall of ice formed behind her, and the force of impact from Devlin's attack threw her directly into it, collapsing the ice on top of her. Devlin watched grimly as his brother, in the form of Ultimate Big Chill, came next to him to favor her with the same dark look. Neither one of them could feel much pity, knowing what she'd put their father through.

Magic blasted through the fallen ice, sending shards of it flying everywhere. Both Devlin and Ken leapt into the air to avoid it, Ultimate Big Chill going intangible. But it was clear that Charmcaster was gunning for Devlin. She shot another blast of magic, and he dropped to the ground. He groaned in pain as he lay there, but as Charmcaster approached, Ultimate Big Chill flew through her, freezing her in a glacier. Devlin got up and backed away as his brother got out of range, and he threw a Null Void containment capsule at the glacier. Once she was captured, Ultimate Big Chill reached down and picked up the capsule.

"Since when do you taunt the bad guys?" he asked Devlin.

He shrugged, grinning. "Felt like the right thing to do at the time."

"Right," Ken answered, reverting to human form. "I think I can get used to this new guy. He got a name?"

"Ultimate Big Chill, I think." At the incredulous look Ken gave him, Devlin raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, it wasn't my idea! Name aside, he's a great alien for number twenty-one."

"Yeah," Ken agreed. "But first, we need to take care of this." He held out his hand and took hold of Devlin's shoulder, and the Omnitrix released a burst of stabilizing bio-energy, resetting Devlin's biofield.

"Thanks," Devlin said.

"No problem," Ken answered. "Now, come on. You've _got_ to tell me everything that happened."

As they started to make their way back, Devlin launched into his story, not leaving out a detail.

**The title for this chapter comes from another Beatles song, "Hey Jude": "The movement you need is on your shoulder." I was careful not to reveal one way or another if Devlin would recognize any of the **_**Alien Force**_** aliens, but I figured that the Ultimate forms would probably not be in the Omnitrix, as the changes (presumably to their DNA) were made via the Ultimatrix.**


	10. A Boundless Life

The Theory of Everything  
Epilogue: "A Boundless Life"

By the time they reached home, Devlin was exhausted. He'd already been running on very little sleep in the other timeline before the Mori Spell had gotten him, and the battle had only made things worse.

He was on his way to his old room when Gwendolyn came down the hall from the opposite side, looking serious. He stopped immediately, giving her a worried look.

"Is something wrong with Ben?"

"No," she assured, shaking her head. "We don't know how bad the Mori Spell affected him, but he'll recover after some rest. You too, it looks like."

Sheepishly, he blushed slightly. "It was kind of an accident."

Gwendolyn smiled. "The truth is, I wanted to apologize to you for yesterday."

"What?" he asked. He couldn't seem to remember just _what_ had happened yesterday; the timelines had blurred together in his mind. But after a moment, he remembered volunteering to go to the past to retrieve the spell, and Gwendolyn storming out.

"I overreacted a little when you told me your plan," she admitted. "It was wrong, and I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he insisted. With some reluctance, he added, "Great-Grandpa said it was because I reminded you of my dad."

"You do," she said, the smile not leaving her face. "You're just like Ben sometimes."

He blinked, taken aback. In an entire decade, no one had ever told him that before; the comparisons had always been to his other father. "Really?"

"You've got the same drive he has, or at least what he had when he was younger," she explained. "When he was a kid, things weren't easy for him. Other kids picked on him, and whenever he tried to stand up against the bullies in school, he only got in trouble. When he got the Omnitrix, he immediately decided that he was going to use it to become a hero, and he fought to prove himself. In the same way, you're constantly trying to prove yourself to the whole world, trying to show you can follow your own destiny, and you're not just your father's son."

Devlin was speechless for a moment, but he finally asked, "What about Ken?"

She shook her head. "He doesn't have that drive. For him, it's more what he _wants_, not something he _needs_, the way you do and Ben did. He's finding his motivation, but it's a different one."

It was all beginning to make sense, and he said, "So when I gave my idea, it reminded you too much of Ben, and with him hurt like that…"

Gwendolyn nodded. "It was too much to take right then. But I knew you'd be able to do it, even then. Another thing you and Ben have in common is the ability to make people want to believe in you."

Even as he thought on how the younger Ben seemed so willing to trust him and how Gwen and Kevin came to believe in him, Devlin again asked, "Really?"

Gwendolyn put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. "I think you know the answer to that already," she said as she walked away.

Slowly, a smile spread across Devlin's face, and he nodded as he opened the door to his room and went inside.

* * *

Ben stopped off at a local pharmacy before he went home, picking up some alcohol wipes and bandages. Once he found a little privacy, he pulled up his shirt to check the cut on his side. It wasn't as big or as deep as he'd feared, so he wiped away the blood and sweat before sticking a large bandage over it.

"The dangers of superheroing?" asked a familiar voice.

Ben jumped, looking up to see Reiko Momoi of ORE Journal. She smiled patiently at him as he pulled down his shirt and walked over.

"Look, if this is about earlier…" he started.

"Yes," she answered. "I wanted to apologize for my intern." Ben gave her a look of surprise. This was not how his dealings with the press usually went. "Shinji is eager, but he lets that get ahead of him. Our editor is putting him on smaller stories until he learns to control himself a little better."

"Um, it's okay," Ben replied. "You didn't have to come out here to…"

"I did have another reason," Momoi admitted, and Ben suppressed the urge to groan. "Your battle with Captain Nemesis."

Ben really _did_ groan now. "I really don't want to talk about it."

"That is your right," Momoi agreed. "But _The Harangue Nation_ has exclusive interviewing privileges with Captain Nemesis. So far, his story is the only one we've heard, and only through one reporter. I think we should be allowed to hear your take, if _The Harangue Nation_ isn't willing to interview you."

"Hold on," Ben said, shocked. "You're actually willing to hear my side of the story?"

"Not all of us in the press are as unbalanced as Will Harangue," she insisted. "ORE may be a small paper, but we do have high standards of journalistic integrity. I understand you haven't always dealt with that."

"Not really," he answered. "Oh, but that's between us, okay?"

Momoi smiled. "Our secret. I believe there were other witnesses on-scene? Mr. Okubo, our editor, is trying to get in touch with Jennifer Nocturne's agent for a statement. Would anyone else be willing to offer their statement?"

"I don't know," Ben admitted. "Julie might still be mad, but she does want to help. I'm not sure about Gwen and Kevin, though. And I'm kind of worried about putting them in the spotlight, after everything I've been going through."

"If they're minors, then we're bound to protect their identities," Momoi assured him. "We'll be fair to all sides in this."

It was a big step, trusting one reporter after all of the trouble he'd had with the rest. Still, Ben nodded, and Momoi took out a tape recorder as they began the interview.

* * *

Ben sat at the computer, monitoring Ken as he fought Sixsix. He offered advice when needed, but otherwise, he let his son handle the situation his own way. He'd certainly proven he was ready.

It was a little hard to accept that he wasn't going to be going out there again. Charmcaster had used up enough of his lifeforce that he knew he couldn't fight again. He'd live a long, healthy life, as far as he could tell, but his days using the Omnitrix were over.

Maybe he'd take up teaching after this. The Plumbers had contacted him about it a few times in the past. Maybe this time, he'd take them up on their offer.

But for now, he needed to help his son the one way he could.

Ken closed his eyes out of instinct as he was thrown back, so he didn't see Sixsix leaping above him, a spear pointing down.

"Above you!" warned a voice in his ear.

Ken slid out of the way, narrowly missing the spear as it stuck into the metal next to him. He leapt to his feet as Sixsix pulled his spear free, turning toward him with an incomprehensible snarl.

"Sure, whatever you say," Ken quipped, switching to Ultimate Big Chill.

Since acquiring the form, it had quickly become his favorite. It seemed considerably stronger than some of the others in his arsenal, and its ice flames were more than useful in a pinch.

Sixsix came at him, swiping with his spear. Ultimate Big Chill went intangible, then blasted endothermic fire at him. The flames absorbed heat from the air around Sixsix, quickly encasing him in ice. Ken changed back into human form and tossed a containment capsule, trapping Sixsix—ice and all—within.

"You know," Ben joked over the comm, "that form makes things too easy. You're going to have to find stronger enemies at this rate."

"Thanks, Dad," Ken deadpanned.

* * *

Gwen struck a match, watching the flame come to life for a moment before she set it against the torn pages of the Archamada and then waved it out. The Astra Spell burned quickly, disappearing into embers with ease. The Mori Spell was still damp and took longer, but it too became nothing more than ashes.

"Never thought I'd see _you _of all people burning a book."

Gwen failed to hold back a smile. "I wanted to be sure nobody could ever use that spell again."

"Yeah, can't blame you," Kevin answered, coming over. He glanced at her hand and saw she was holding her locket. "What happened?"

She held it up. "The chain broke when I was fighting Charmcaster."

Kevin took it and absorbed a little bit of the gold, using his powers to repair the chain. "Not surprised it did. This thing's kind of old."

"You got it from your mom, right?" she asked. He looked startled, but she smiled and lied, "I guessed. I didn't think you'd be able to pick out jewelry on your own."

"I can so!" Kevin protested. "I know how to be sensitive!" As Gwen laughed, he admitted, "Yeah. Dad gave it to her when I was born."

Gwen suddenly stopped laughing and gave him a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"Don't worry about it," he insisted, putting the locket back in her hand. "Mom used to have a photo of all three of us inside there. When she gave it to me, the picture was gone. Don't know what happened to it. I'd figured she threw it away, but…"

But she'd kept the locket. And she still had a photo of her son and late husband. She must have kept the photo that had been in the locket too, Gwen realized. And the same in Devlin's timeline. In both worlds, Kevin's mother had kept the picture before giving over the locket.

It made it a little easier to forgive her.

"Anyway, that's old memories," Kevin said, trying to shift the mood.

"Yeah," Gwen agreed, hugging him. "We've got new ones now."

* * *

Devlin stood on one end of the portal to the Null Void, staring into the other end, where his other father's lair was. As he expected, Kevin 11,000 made his way out, sneering at him.

Not wanting to hear his taunts this time, Devlin tossed the locket through the portal. Kevin caught it without trying, but when he recognized it, he stared at Devlin in shock.

For a moment, their eyes met, and it was almost like they understood each other.

Then Devlin turned away and closed the portal.

Curiosity got the better of Kevin, and he opened the locket. There wasn't anything inside, but all the same, he kept it with him as he ventured back into his lair.

On the other end of the closed portal, Devlin set down his bracelet and walked out of the Null Void Chamber. He wasn't sure if he was ready to forgive Kevin, but he could at least accept that he was capable of change, if the other timeline's Kevin was any indication.

"Are you seriously in here _again_?" Ken complained, as Devlin made his way out.

"Hey, someone's got to take care of the capsules you keep bringing in," he argued. "I've got another two days before I have to head home. Stop making me work on my vacation."

"You work?" Ken repeated. "When are you going to get out there and help like you said you would?"

"Doctor's orders," Devlin answered with a smirk. "No fighting until I'm completely recovered from the spell."

"And since when do you listen to the doctor?" Ken asked, shoving his brother. Devlin grabbed Ken in a headlock, being just gentle enough that he wouldn't hurt him.

"Jealous that big brother's all grown up?" Devlin teased.

"You wish!"

Ben grinned as he watched his sons wrestle, while Gwendolyn crossed her arms with a smirk.

"Aren't those two ever going to grow up?" she asked.

"Not a chance," he answered.

* * *

In another time and another world was a similar scene from another pair of brothers in all but blood.

"You went and sold us out to the reporter?" Kevin asked, keeping Ben in a headlock as he gave him the noogie to end all noogies.

"Ow, my head!" Ben protested.

"It's soft enough to take it!" Kevin insisted.

Reiko Momoi watched in surprise as Ben struggled against Kevin's death grip. Meanwhile, Gwen palmed her face.

"When are you two going to grow up?" she asked.


End file.
